HIS country rarely attracts much international attention. But when Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president, used the courts last year to bankrupt one of its main newspapers and intimidate others, he touched off a wave of outrage among media organisations and human-rights groups throughout the Americas, as well as tut-tuttings from the United States and the European Union. On February 27th, Army Day in Ecuador, Mr Correa signalled a retreat. He said he would pardon four newspapermen sentenced to three years in jail and forgive fines of $40m against them and their newspaper, El Universo of Guayaquil.

Such climbdowns are rare for Mr Correa, a proud and thin-skinned man who has ridden an oil-fuelled economic boom to become Ecuador's longest-ruling leader for a century. But he is not calling off his assault on the media, an industry in which private business, he has vowed “will be the exception and not the rule.” He is building a government-owned media empire. A new law bans the media from endorsing candidates in elections. Together with Venezuela, Ecuador is trying to get the Organisation of American States to slash the budget and remit of its special rapporteur for freedom of expression. Media-freedom advocates fear Mr Correa is setting a bad example in the region.

The president sued El Universo and one of its columnists last year over an article which claimed that he had told troops to fire on a hospital during a police mutiny in 2010. The article was irresponsible and probably libellous. Mr Correa is right that Ecuador's privately owned media have many faults, not least that some have fallen into the trap of acting as a substitute for a weak political opposition.

But the remedies he seeks are far worse than the media's shortcomings. And while insisting that he was suing El Universo as a private citizen, he turned up at the court with an official entourage. In a separate case, he secured convictions and a $2m fine against two investigative journalists who published a book about his brother's business dealings with the government.

The sentence against El Universo was confirmed last month by the country's new supreme court, set up under a constitution inspired by Mr Correa. The case has served to show that Ecuador's courts are happy to do the president's bidding, and thus has further undermined their credibility. This week an international arbitration tribunal in The Hague agreed to hear a claim by Chevron against Ecuador's government over what the American oil company says is a fraudulent award of $18.2 billion in damages against it by an Ecuadorean court.

So far most Ecuadoreans have been untroubled by the weakening of their right to freedom of expression and the undermining of the separation of powers under Mr Correa. They have taken more notice of rapid economic growth and the increase in social spending. Thanks mainly to the rise in the world oil price, the government's budget has risen by 163% since 2007, when Mr Correa took office. The country is full of new or repaired roads, bridges and health clinics. Poverty is falling, albeit less rapidly than between 2000 and 2007. State banks are providing cheap mortgages, spurring a construction boom.

In a country that was long a byword for political instability, Mr Correa has proved unusually durable. He has used some of the tactics of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, such as a new constitution allowing two consecutive terms, although his brand of populist socialism is more moderate. His high-handedness means that the appearance of stability is in part misleading: ministers come and go; tax rules often change; and crime has surged amid two unsuccessful police reforms.

The question for Ecuador is whether the boom can be sustained. A big chunk of the extra spending has gone on salaries, rather than services, and some on white elephants, such as two little-used airports. Mr Correa's government defaulted on foreign bonds in 2008; the president, who is an economist, quarrelled with the World Bank. Instead, Ecuador has contracted loans totalling $6.3 billion from China, mainly at commercial rates, according to a report last month by the Inter-American Dialogue, a think-tank in Washington.

Like Mr Chávez, Mr Correa sees himself as indispensable. Polls suggest he should win another four-year term at an election in a year's time. In the absence of a popular alternative candidate, he may be right to think that Ecuador's media are the main obstacle to his continuation in power. His Army Day retreat may prove to be merely a tactical manoeuvre.