Gustavo Noboa

Gustavo José Joaquín Noboa Bejarano (Guayaquil, August 21, 1937-Miami, February 16, 2021) was an Ecuadorian lawyer, university professor and politician. He was President of the Republic of Ecuador from January 22, 2000 to January 15, 2003.

Biography

Great-great-grandson of President Diego Noboa y Arteta, Gustavo Noboa Bejarano was born in the city of Guayaquil on August 21, 1937 and was baptized with the names of Gustavo José Joaquín. He is the son of the well-known Guayaquil politician and genealogist Luis Noboa de Icaza and Laura Estela Bejarano de Icaza.

All his studies were done in his hometown. He first at the Colegio Salesiano Cristóbal Colón, where in 1956 he graduated with a Bachelor's degree sharing benches with those who would later become well-known politicians, businessmen, professors and professionals; Dr. Heinz Moeller Freile, Ab. Achilles Rigail Santistevan, Ab. Sucre Pérez Baquerizo, Dr. Alfonso Loaiza Grunauer, Ing. René Bucaram Bokhazi, among others;, Later he completed his higher studies at the University of Guayaquil, where in 1965 he obtained the title of Doctor of Jurisprudence.

The following year he joined the Santiago de Guayaquil Catholic University as a professor of jurisprudence, a role he held for 30 years, having been dean of the Faculty of Jurisprudence for 5 years and rector of the University for 10 years. During his management, a large part of the university facilities was supplemented, a great boost was given to academic research work, creating a molecular biology laboratory for that matter, and the university campus was paved and provided with sewerage.

Finally, he separated from the Catholic University and continued his educational work as rector of Blue Hill College in Guayaquil, an academic institution related to Florida Atlantic University, in the USA.

For more than 10 years he worked at Ingenios San Carlos. Despite not being affiliated with any political party, he was called several times to perform important functions: he was Governor of the Province of Guayas during the government of Dr. Osvaldo Hurtado, between March 1983 and August 1984, and during that same period He was also President of the Civil Defense Board and the Guayas Traffic Commission.

He was the brother of Ricardo Noboa, a veteran right-wing politician in the country, Ernesto Noboa, director of the Guayaquil Charity Board, and Fernando Noboa, a renowned Guayaquil gynecologist. He was married to María Isabel Baquerizo, with whom he had 6 children.

Vice President of Ecuador

He was elected Vice President as a candidate for Jamil Mahuad by the Popular Democracy party in the 1998 Ecuadorian presidential elections, not being affiliated with the party, but close to its ideology. Initially he maintained good relations with Mahuad until the worsening of the crisis of 1998, when he began to express his disagreement with the economic measures promulgated by the government, positioning himself as a critic of Mahuad from the vice presidency. The serious economic situation of the country led to the beginning of an exodus at the end of 1999 that led approximately 200,000 Ecuadorians –mainly peasants, artisans and small landowners– to leave the country for Europe.

On January 9, 2000, Mahuad, after 17 months in office and before the accelerated devaluation of the sucre, announced the dollarization of the economy. Since 1998, already since the government of Fabián Alarcón, there was the economic crisis in Ecuador that included the bankruptcy of 80% of the national financial system as well as the devaluation in two years of 75% of the value of the currency. Events precipitated and on January 21 of the same year, when, supported by socialist and indigenous organizations that had arrived in Quito to protest against dollarization and the government and in collaboration with Army officers, Antonio Vargas Huatatoca – leader of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE)–, Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez and Carlos Solórzano Constantine –former president of the Supreme Court of Justice– proclaim the so-called “National Salvation Board", without any real power beyond a riot in the National Congress building. Faced with this situation, the Armed Forces of Ecuador carry out a coup against Mahuad. After this coup d'état by the high military command of Ecuador, a military government of the Supreme Council of State was formed ephemerally, which decided that it would also take control of the so-called Junta de Salvación Nacional formed in the riot of the Congress building in order to maintain order in the country. The military high command appoints General Carlos Mendoza Poveda –Head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces– as Colonel Gutiérrez's replacement in the Junta de Salvación and establishes a civic-military Triumvirate chaired by him, with its other two members being Vargas and Solórzano. Faced with the popular and international rejection of the triumvirate controlled by the Ecuadorian Armed Forces, in the early morning of January 22, the high command of the Armed Forces forced Mendoza to resign and, making use of the presidential succession chain, designated that the The new president would be the then vice president Gustavo Noboa. For its part, Congress, on the morning of January 22, with the support of 87 of the 96 deputies present, declared Mahuad "dismissed" for "abandonment of his functions" - although he had been militarily overthrown the day before. – and invested Noboa as President of the Republic with a mandate until January 15, 2003.

President of Ecuador

Noboa with the presidential band.

Public policies

The first months of his government were difficult, since the worst economic crisis of the last fifty years of republican life still did not fully end in the year 2000 (signs that Mahuad's dollarizing economic policies –continued by Noboa– led to a successful economic recovery would only be evident by early 2001). Certain unions such as transporters, educators and health workers took advantage of the occasion to announce a series of strikes and stoppages, to force the government to give them more money, threatening to create a situation of chaos like the one they created for Mahuad. history that was recent. Noboa varied his position many times, going from dialogue to intransigence with riots and strikes.

With the aim of appeasing social tensions and facilitating dialogue with CONAIE, Noboa petitioned Congress for amnesty for the civilians and soldiers who participated in the riot at the National Congress building (who had been prosecuted as " coup leaders", while the military high command of the Armed Forces that carried out the coup against Mahuad had no legal consequences), a petition that was approved by the legislators. Since January 2001, just after one year of his government, there were a massive number of student demonstrations in Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca, in opposition to the increase in public transport fares, gas prices for domestic use and vehicle fuels; They proposed that the State continue subsidizing these fuels. In February, Noboa decreed a State of Emergency, after the leaders of the indigenous uprising broke off the dialogue and closed the highways of the Sierra. The uprisings left three peasants dead and more than eighty wounded, including the military. An agreement was finally reached, in exchange for a partial rectification by the Noboa government of recent increases in fuel, domestic gas, and transportation rates. public, and the freezing of other increases announced but not yet applied, such as the increase in VAT from 12% to 15%. Before the end of 2001, the transfer of water from the Daule-Peripa dam to the La Esperanza and Poza Honda dams was inaugurated, a work that will transform the extensive but arid fields of Manabí into arable land, making them more suitable for agricultural production and livestock that characterizes that province.

Another objective of the government was the sale of the telephone and electricity companies, which since their creation had become an economic burden for the State, a sale that never materialized, due to pressure from the powerful unions of bureaucrats of those state companies and by lack of interest of foreign investors in buying such companies. The proceeds from these sales would go to the Solidarity Fund. Despite the social, political and economic difficulties that he had to face, President Noboa managed to achieve important goals that are reflected -especially- in the public works, which concluded more than 5000 kilometers of highways in the Troncal de la Sierra or Panamericana, which connects the Rumichaca Bridge, to the North, with Macará, to the South; the Vía del Pacífico, the Troncal Amazónica, the arterial corridor that links Esmeraldas with Francisco de Orellana, in the East; and the San Lorenzo-Ibarra and Loja-Zamora roads.

His government brought drinking water –through pipes– to various towns in the Sierra and the Coast, and especially to the Santa Elena peninsula, which had been waiting for it for more than 30 years. It contracted the construction of the bridge attached to the Rafael Mendoza Avilés – which links Guayaquil with Durán and which was later given the name of Carlos Pérez Peraso – and confirmed to the municipality of Guayaquil that the central government would contribute 75% of the construction cost. of the viaducts on Quito and Machala avenues.

Economic policies

The government of Gustavo Noboa maintained the dollarization system and accentuated the new economic policies initiated by the final stage of the Mahuad government, achieving very good economic recovery results from 2001. He renegotiated the foreign debt after the unprecedented unilateral moratorium on Brady bonds declared by Mahuad. In August 2000, he achieved the renegotiation of the foreign debt, which was achieved by the special envoy Jorge Gallardo Zavala under very beneficial conditions for Ecuador. By then, one more event determined the economic life of Ecuador: on September 9 the Sucre was withdrawn from circulation, and the US dollar began to be used as the only currency. During his presidential term, Gustavo Noboa decided to continue with the decided dollarization process and initiated by Mahuad, despite criticism from the country's socialist movements that promoted the anti-dollarization protests that led to the coup d'état by the armed forces against Mahuad. He promoted the laws called Trole I and Trole II that allowed the consolidation of the dollarization process decided and initiated by Mahuad.

Noboa and the other public officials based all their hopes of increasing tax revenues on the new Heavy Crude Oil Pipeline (OCP). Its construction was approved on February 15, 2001 and in November 2003 the pipeline began operations. The project had strong opposition from peasant organizations and environmentalists, who announced that this project would result in the devastation of rural communities and the affectation of ecosystems. The privatization program, during the Noboa government, progressed slowly due to a: the scant interest of foreign operators towards state service companies, the mobilization against privatization and the declaration of unconstitutionality of the enabling laws by the Constitutional Court.

Other events

During 2002, various events occurred: the eruption of the Reventador volcano; a military powder magazine exploded in Riobamba; Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, presidents of Cuba and Venezuela, respectively, visited Ecuador. The President's image was affected by some events: his brother, Ricardo Noboa Bejarano, was in front of the National Modernization Council (CONAM) from February 2000 to 2002, the year in which he resigned after the Trole II Law was declared unconstitutional for the Constitutional Court and the privatization processes of the electric and telephone companies failed due to the opposition of trade unionists and political leaders opposed to the government. One more problem was the resignation of its Minister of Economy and Finance, Carlos Julio Emmanuel, after several mayors They will accuse officials from their ministry of demanding bribes in exchange for releasing budget items for their municipalities. Months later, the Supreme Court of Justice ordered the arrest of Emmanuel at the request of the State Comptroller General for an alleged crime of falsifying documents. It also brought disastrous consequences when Noboa suggested the name of the priest Carlos Flores to the CAE Board of Directors with the intention of moralizing Customs. Father Flores, then named District Manager of the Quito Customs, committed acts of corruption and fled abroad as a fugitive from justice. He was finally arrested and sentenced to 12 years in prison, within the criminal trial that followed him for the illegal negotiation of 147 credit notes, for an amount of 4.9 million dollars.

Ministers of State

Post-Presidential Life

About three months after his term ended, he was accused of embezzlement in the renegotiation of the foreign debt. This denunciation by his political enemy León Febres-Cordero led to a prison order that forced Noboa to seek political asylum in the Dominican Republic, where he remained from 2003 to April 2005, when he returned to Ecuador due to the declaration of nullity of his trial. carried out by the Supreme Court elected after the agreement of former President Abdalá Bucaram with President Gutiérrez.

After Gutiérrez was overthrown, a new Supreme Court annulled the actions of his predecessors and ordered Noboa's house arrest in Guayaquil. Subsequently, however, the charges against Noboa were dropped when he was amnestied during the Constituent Assembly of 2007 and he regained his freedom since the charges against him were never proven. He moved away from politics, taking care of his private practice and academia.

Death

Noboa died on February 16, 2021, due to a heart attack while convalescing after previous brain meningioma surgery, which he underwent at the beginning of February 2021 in Miami, United States. His death was communicated by his relatives through social networks. His state funeral was held between February 20 and 21, 2021, after his remains were repatriated from the United States. Noboa was buried after noon on Sunday, February 21, 2021 at the Parque de la Paz Cemetery. from La Aurora, in the Daule canton.

Decorations and merits

Shield attributed as a knight of Isabella the Catholic.

• Gran Collar and Grand Master of the National Order of San Lorenzo, Ecuador (2000).
• Gran Collar and Grand Master of the National Order to Merit, Ecuador (2000).
• Grand Commander of the Order of St. Silvestre, Vatican City (1979).
• Diner with plaque of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great, Vatican City (1996).
• Gran Collar de la Orden Piana, Vatican City (2002).
• Great Necklace of the Order of Malta, Vatican City (2000).
• Gran Collar de la Orden de Boyacá, Colombia (2000).
• Gran Collar de la Orden al Mérito, Chile (2000).
• Gran Collar de la Orden de Isabel la Católica, España (2001).
• Great Collar of the Order of the South Cross, Brazil (2001).
• Grand Cross with shiny Order to Merit for Distinguished Services, Peru (2001).
• Gran Collar de la Orden del Condor de los Andes, Bolivia (2001).
• Grand Cross Gold Plate of the National Order Juan Mora Fernández, Costa Rica (2001).
• Grand Cross Gold Plate of the Order to Merit of Duarte, Sanchez and Mella, Dominican Republic (2002).
• Gran Cruz with diamonds from the Order of the Sun, Peru (2002).
• Grand Cross Gold Plate of the Heraldic Order of Christopher Columbus, Dominican Republic (2002).