Oct. 1, 2007 (LPAC)--With exit polls and a "rapid count" projecting the government received a majority of more than 60% of the vote in yesterday's Constituent Assembly elections, Ecuadorians have given President Rafael Correa a mandate to proceed, rapidly, with leading the transformation of the State into an instrument to defend the General Welfare.

We have won "the mother of all battles," Correa declared, as the size of his government's victory became clear last night. In interviews and speeches since, Correa and members of his cabinet stress that "dismantling the current economic model, to benefit the most dispossess layers of the Nation" is a top priority of the Constituent Assembly, which is to convene by the end of this month to draft a new constitution. Its tasks include both providing the State with the power to regulate the national financial system and advance crucially needed regional integration projects, such as the Bank of the South, Correa said.

Correa's message to the elite, which destroyed the country, the richest two to three per cent who made the decisions on people's lives and the nation's resources, who said nothing when two million Ecuadorians were forced to leave the country to find a living, many dying in the attempt, and who are now worried that they are about to lose their privileges: "Take a valium." They screamed that we were dividing the country, he said this morning. Well, the vote shows that it has never been more unified.