El candidato Moreno, quien lidera las encuestas, ha ofrecido volver los ojos a la inversión privada del país, brindando como ofrenda de paz, la creación de un Consejo Consultivo Tributario, en el que los empresarios puedan manifestar sus preocupaciones sobre la carga tributaria y la no pertinencia de ciertos impuestos, como mecanismo para garantizar que se realizará una revisión técnica de los mismos. Así también se ha manifestado abierto a la revisión del anticipo al impuesto a la renta y ha ofertado cuarenta universidades para la formación técnica y tecnológica, así como dos nuevas universidades en Santo Domingo y la Amazonia, como estrategias para mejorar el talento humano.

En lo que ha sido parco el candidato Moreno es en su planteamiento para reducir el servicio de la deuda y en cómo alcanzar equilibrios fiscales, sin embargo si propone el programa Un País Que te Cuida, en el que se ofrece subir el Bono de Desarrollo Humano a US.150, e incremento de la pensión de los adultos mayores de US.50 a US.100 y ampliación de la cobertura para llegar a 560 mil adultos mayores, lo que implica también incrementar la presión fiscal.

El candidato Moreno tampoco ha mencionado sus propuestas para mejorar la competitividad, fomentar las exportaciones, y cuales son las bases de su modelo productivo, esto es si seguiría con la priorización de la estrategia de “industrias industrializantes”, propuesta por el Vicepresidente Glas o se enfocaría en un plan exportador en los nichos de mayor valor agregado de cadenas productivas existentes. Aunque si ha mencionado la necesidad de tecnificación del campo y fomento al emprendimiento como estrategias en su propuesta de Pacto Nacional por el Empleo, Inversión Productiva, Innovación e Inclusión. Recordemos que el Vicepresidente Glas ha apostado su capital político en el llamado ¨plan de industrias básicas pesadas¨, el mismo que requiere de una inversión estimada de US. 11.500 millones de dólares, y en la que se concibe financiar con inversión pública los proyectos de la refinería y petroquímica, acero plano, cobre, aluminio, astilleros y pulpa. Si bien el Gobierno actual, ha reconocido tibiamente los esfuerzos fallidos de sustitución de importaciones en ciertos sectores, donde el país no tiene ventajas competitivas dinámicas, es incierta cual sería la política del binomio Moreno-Glas. En el mismo sentido, si bien el pragmatismo se impuso y se firmó el acuerdo con Europa, y el candidato Moreno ha reconocido la necesidad de “refrescar las relaciones internacionales”, queda aún mucho por conocer sobre l nueva dirección en el manejo de las políticas internacionales. Finalmente, no está clara la posición del candidato Moreno en relación al proyecto de Ley de Herencia propuesta por el actual régimen y semilla de la discordia con el sector empresarial.

El candidato Guillermo Lasso, a quien el mayor número de encuestadoras, lo ubican en el segundo lugar, ha basado su campaña electoral en la promesa de generar un millón de empleos en cuatro años, sin dar mayores detalles que no sea el que eliminará catorce impuestos¹ que devolverán US.3.000 millones a las manos de los ciudadanos, y que con un shock de confianza la inversión regresará y retomaremos la senda de crecimiento. Recibiendo un país con un déficit fiscal entre 6 y 7% del PIB, con un servicio de la deuda que al 2016 llegó al 8% del PIB,² es muy difícil creer que sólo a punto de generar confianza, y por la fuerza de una mayor inversión privada se generaría el nivel de crecimiento que permita a su vez recuperar los equilibrios monetarios y fiscales. Para que la economía ecuatoriana pueda generar un millón de empleos en 4 años debería crecer entre el 6 y 8% de manera sostenible, tarea que no parece plausible dada las razones ya anotadas. En economía, no existen milagros, más aún en el cortísimo plazo, es imposible lograr equilibrios fiscales reduciendo impuestos, impulsando la demanda interna sin que se afecte el sector externo, y generar crecimiento que a su vez multiplique empleos sin que existe algún ajuste en alguna de las variables mencionadas.

Por otra parte, el candidato Lasso no ha brindado detalles en cómo reduciría la vulnerabilidad de la economía ecuatoriana a los shocks externos, esto es como diversificar la economía ecuatoriana, para que sufra menos con las caídas de los precios del petróleo y de las materias primas, que no sea su estrategia de otorgar créditos al 1% de interés y a 30 años plazo para reactivar el agro ecuatoriano, y la política de celebrar acuerdos comerciales. La única estrategia que parece dar cuenta de la política industrial del candidato es la propuesta de crear zonas francas o zonas especiales en Manabí provincia que fue afectada por el terremoto, esto beneficiaría a sectores como turismo, inversiones, construcción y salud. La zona franca incluirá incentivos tributarios para la reconstrucción de la infraestructura hotelera, y sería por 30 años. Restaría ver en que se diferencian estas zonas francas de la actual legislación que permite la creación de zonas económica especiales con incentivos fiscales diferenciados.

Recordemos que una economía dolarizada requiere para su mantenimiento de liquidez en dólares, la misma que se alimenta básicamente del superávit de la balanza comercial y de pagos. Es decir, que uno de los requisitos básicos para mantener la dolarización es el de generar más divisas ya sea mediante mayores exportaciones, menores importaciones o un mayor influjo de capitales, financiamiento o remesas. De allí la importancia de conocer que proponen los candidatos para mejorar la competitividad de la producción nacional y de las exportaciones. Parecería que la propuesta del candidato Lasso de eliminar el examen de ingreso y la SENESCYT responden a puros intereses electorales, sin proponer soluciones efectivas para mejorar la preparación del talento humano para el futuro, así también de cómo mejorar la productividad y como hacer de la innovación la fuente de nuestro desarrollo. Pareciera que Lasso nos propone el modelo del “goteo”,³ donde la sola existencia del mercado, de la inversión privada, y de menor regulación resuelve mágicamente los problemas del desarrollo.

Las propuestas de los candidatos Viteri y Bucaram también caen en el ámbito de las generalidades, y la del candidato Moncayo si bien más parca en los ofrecimientos políticos sociales, no se acaba diferenciando con claridad de la del Gobierno actual.

La candidata Viteri ofrece un modelo de mayor intervención privada, también con reducción de la carga impositiva, pero mucho más limitada que la del candidato Lasso, y centrada en la eliminación del impuesto a la renta y el de salida de divisas, pero con oferta de ciertos subsidios fiscales como el eléctrico a un millón de hogares que consumen energía eléctrica por debajo de 110 kilovatios al mes en la Sierra y 130 kilovatios en Costa y Galápagos, la condonación de deudas de los agricultores, entre otros. No ofrece tampoco detalles de sobre cómo se impulsaría la diversificación productiva, la innovación y la mejora en el talento humano, que no sea el enunciado de un Ecuador Digital, que facilite el acceso de los jóvenes a las tecnologías. Coincide en la eliminación del examen del ingreso superior, pero no plantea propuestas alternativas de cómo se alcanzaría una mejora en la calidad educativa universitaria.

En lo que todos los candidatos coinciden es en fomentar el emprendimiento a través del paso de leyes especiales como en el caso de Lasso o en ofrecimientos específicos de financiamiento como en el caso de Moreno y Moncayo.

El gran reto que enfrenta el siguiente gobierno, que es el de reactivar la economía manteniendo en equilibrio los sector monetario, externo y fiscal, no es menor y requiere de propuestas serias y coordinadas para poder realizarlo sin ajustes que afecten a los más pobres. Lamentablemente, la mayor parte de los ciudadanos iremos con los ojos vendados a las urnas, sin conocer como los candidatos plantear estos importantes retos. Nuestra democracia demanda más que un baratillo de ofertas como el que hemos observado.

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I also appreciated that Mr. Cassel is not an environmental expert and that he has not been afforded access to all of the documents which the Republic has received through U.S. discovery from Chevron’s numerous experts. But the gist of what Chevron did is not all that complicated: Chevron systematically used its pre-inspection data to avoid sampling during the judicial inspections where it knew there would be contamination.

Does Chevron deny that it conducted extensive, expensive pre-inspection testing? And does Chevron truly contend that it did not use those results to determine where they would sample during the judicial inspections? To me the notion that Chevron’s experts by happenstance chose locations that generally did not repeat findings of pollution strains any sense of reasonableness.

There has been so much noise in this debate that too often the voices of our indigenous citizens have been drowned out. Chevron accuses the indigenous citizens’ lawyers of fraud. One trial court in the U.S. has sustained that charge. Chevron has attacked the Republic’s elected officials and its judiciary. And my government too has responded in kind to Chevron’s attacks. At some point, after the parties are finished attacking one another, it would be helpful to lower the rhetoric and study—and confirm—what we know: that massive, widespread contamination exists in the Oriente and that a large portion of that is the direct result of Texaco’s actions.

In his original reply to my post, Mr. Cassel proposed a resolution of this long-running dispute based on a “credible, impartial mechanism to assess whether there is ongoing environmental damage and, if so, who is responsible.” Regardless of what the indigenous plaintiffs’ lawyers may or may not have done, the fact is that Chevron asked that the dispute be resolved by an Ecuadorian court but Chevron has since disavowed the resulting judgment. Here’s the question: What will Chevron accept? If, as Mr. Cassel suggests, any resolution of the dispute depends on an honest analysis of conditions in the Oriente, where will that analysis come from that is satisfactory to all parties? And given the concerns above, will Chevron actually permit an honest assessment from anybody, and free from the tactics it has employed to date?

In the absence of reasoned discourse, the dispute will continue to be a source of conflict that will help nobody. If, on the other hand, Mr. Cassel does have any influence at Chevron, I would ask him to advocate for the honest assessment he has previously proposed so that the true victims can be helped. But until such time, this dispute will remain in the hands of the lawyers and experts, and my business will remain the traditional duties of an Ambassador in a foreign land—to represent my country’s political and economic interests in this great country.

* * * *

Mr. Cassel makes two broad points. First, Mr. Cassel points out that Texaco was a minority participant in a joint venture with the state oil company and that Texaco signed an agreement with the state to clean the Oriente. What Mr. Cassel ignores is what I discussed in my original post: For 25 years Texaco was the Operator of the oil extraction operations in the Oriente and as the Operator, Texaco made all of the decisions related to finding, extracting, and cleaning up crude oil.

Second, Mr. Cassel points to the state-owned oil company’s practices as if they excuse Chevron’s liabilities. But as far as I understand the Lago Agrio court’s decision, it did not require Chevron to pay for the clean up of contamination caused by the state owned oil company. The Republic is working with its state-owned oil company to change its practices and to take care of its people. The difference there is that the state-owned oil company is doing its part. As I’ve said, we are not running away from PetroEcuador’s responsibility. And Chevron should stop running away from its own.

Finally, Mr. Cassel has raised a number of detailed responses to the evidence I had presented earlier. I respond to some of those points below. But, like Mr. Cassel, I am not an environmental engineer. All of these points have been argued by Chevron and the Republic in the arbitration. I will leave it to the Republic’s lawyers and experts to rebut Chevron’s arguments in the arbitration where all of the evidence may be heard.

Secret Pre-Testing: Contrary to Mr. Cassel’s assertions, the secret tests done by Chevron were neither open nor done by both sides. While it is true that both parties conducted court-ordered site assessments immediately before each judicial inspection, that is not the secret testing I mentioned. Instead Chevron conducted several inspections at each site months before each judicial inspection, creating what its experts called “Playbooks” for each site that directed them how to identify the contamination and how best to avoid it at the judicial inspections.¹ If Chevron’s secret pre-inspections really had been open and court-authorized as Mr. Cassel claims, Chevron’s experts would not have had “access issues” to these sites during their secret testing.²

On the single occasion when the indigenous plaintiffs conducted a site assessment more than the days before a judicial inspection (in that case one week in advance of the very first Judicial Inspection), the stated purpose was to verify their sampling procedures—not to guarantee or skew any results.³

And unlike Chevron, the indigenous plaintiffs did not take samples from locations involved in their pre-JI site assessments for purposes of the official Judicial Inspection itself and indeed openly marked the locations at which they sampled.⁴

Paradoxically, Chevron vigorously objected to the indigenous plaintiffs’ exercise. The day before the Sacha 6 Judicial Inspection, Chevron went so far as to ask that the Sacha 6 JI be cancelled or postponed precisely because the plaintiffs had conducted sampling outside of the JI process. According to Chevron, any sampling or inspections not in the presence of the court was illegal. Because of plaintiffs’ sampling days before, Chevron claimed that the “sites have been unlawfully altered, which makes it impossible to comply with any procedural steps there with evidentiary force.”⁵ Chevron went so far as to claim that the plaintiffs’ actions were “a violation of rights to legal security and the due process of law provided for in Article 23(26) and (27) of Ecuador’s Political Constitution.” Not only were they illegal, Chevron argued, but “Plaintiffs’ ‘furtive’ actions by themselves constitute a severe environment negative impact whose magnitude is unknown.”⁶

The day after their Court filing, at the Sacha 6 Judicial Inspection, counsel for Chevron expressly assured the court that “no technical team from ChevronTexaco Corporation has performed any secret tests here.” ⁷ Yet by that time Chevron’s experts had conducted PIs at many sites and taken hundreds samples.

Surveillance: To clarify, my concern with Chevron’s use of aerial imagery and resident interviews to find hidden pits is not that they found those pits. My concern is that those pits were hidden and not reported in the first place. One of the difficulties in unraveling the facts of oil operations in the Oriente is that Chevron’s affiliate did not maintain adequate records of its operations and in fact explicitly ordered its people to destroy adverse evidence.⁸ And further, even after Chevron identified these pits that had been covered and not previously reported, Chevron often did not notify the Court of their existence.

Abuse of pre-testing: As Mr. Cassel discusses, Chevron claims to have established a “clean perimeter” around its former operations. But it would have been one thing if Chevron had found a “clean perimeter” and then acknowledged that what is inside that perimeter is contaminated. Chevron instead went to great lengths to find a “clean perimeter”—and then claimed that the clean samples from this perimeter were representative of what was inside that perimeter. Ironically for Chevron, it appears the Lago Agrio court used Chevron’s “clean perimeters” for what they were, an admission by Chevron that everything inside of the “clean perimeters” was dirty and must be remediated.

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Last week a district court judge in New York issued a decision addressing the alleged misconduct of the Lago Agrio Plaintiffs’ lawyers. There has been much confusion as to the effect of that decision on the Republic of Ecuador and what it means for the State’s ongoing arbitration against Chevron. We write to offer five points to clarify some of that confusion.

1. The Republic was not a party to the New York action. The Republic has no interest in passing judgment on Chevron’s claims against the Lago Agrio Plaintiffs’ (the LAPs’) lawyers or on Judge Kaplan’s findings regarding such claims. If after all the appeals it is found that the LAPs’ counsel engaged in misconduct, they will be called to account under the laws of the United States. Chevron deliberately chose not to challenge their conduct in an Ecuadorian court with jurisdiction over these types of allegations. As a result, the LAPs’ counsels’ conduct is not an issue for the Republic. And to be clear, the Republic was not a party to and did not participate in the RICO action. For that matter, the Republic also is not and has never been a party to the Lago Agrio action in Ecuador or its predecessor action in New York. The Republic is instead engaged in a separate international arbitration, and it fully intends to defend its interests there.
2. The real story should be the plight of the indigenous plaintiffs. Ecuador has a duty and is committed to protecting the rights of its citizens and environment, just as it has been appropriate and expected for the United States and its officials to understand and take a stand to protect the rights of its citizens and environment in the aftermath of the BP Gulf oil spill. Regardless of the many battles to date and those still yet to come, this is not a game. The news story here must be more than whose team is winning or losing, or who has the bigger team or more resources. The real story should be the plight of the indigenous plaintiffs—the people of the rain forest who live near Chevron’s former operations. Judge Kaplan himself recognized that there is contamination in the Oriente.The indigenous plaintiffs came to the United States to have their day in court. It was Chevron that persuaded the courts in this country that the dispute should be decided instead in Ecuador. When unhappy there, Chevron returned to its own courts. The net result: after twenty years of litigation—ten in this country and ten in Ecuador—these plaintiffs still have no relief.From 1965 to 1990, Chevron’s predecessor, Texaco (acquired by Chevron in 2001) controlled all aspects of oil operations in the rain forest of Ecuador. They decided where to drill, how to drill, how to dispose of wastes, and how to build all of the related infrastructure. When Texaco contracted with the Republic to extract oil, the Republic had no expertise in the area and depended entirely on the American company with decades of experience.Chevron argues that its predecessor did not contaminate the region; and if it did, it remediated; and if any contamination is left, then it is the fault of PetroEcuador, the State-owned company; but if there is any contamination traceable to its predecessor, then crude waste poses no risk. If Chevron devoted even a fraction of its litigation budget to real remediation, the parties together could do so much to help the people of the rain forest.

   As a preliminary matter, we have no intention of running away from our own responsibility. While PetroEcuador has taken clear and dramatic steps to improve upon the infrastructure and systems that Chevron’s predecessor left behind, PetroEcuador also must do more to remedy any contamination for which it is responsible. The Republic does not excuse bad behavior by any company, whether it is owned by the Republic or is headquartered outside its borders. But whatever responsibilities lie at the feet of PetroEcuador, the scientific evidence is overwhelming that Texaco deliberately engaged in practices that it knew would contaminate the region, that it directed its people to destroy documents and evidence of spills and accidents,¹ and that even today Texaco’s waste product may be found in abundance in the soil, sediment, and groundwater.

   Chevron’s culpability is actually worse than found. Most troubling is the discovery that Chevron (in the very litigation in which they accuse the LAPs of fraud) has itself committed a fraud on the Ecuadorian courts. It is now clear that Chevron conducted extensive secret testing at sites prior to court-observed judicial inspections so that it would know where there was—and was not—contamination. Chevron then gamed the system by sampling at known clean locations, or upstream, upgradient or at different depths from known contamination so as to avoid negative findings. Chevron then paid its experts to conclude that these tests were representative of the whole when Chevron knew in fact they were not.

   Chevron’s own experts have candidly explained that they:

   • often could not delineate where the waste pits were because the contamination (that Chevron has publicly denied) in fact migrated far afield from where they expected it to be;²
   • shifted sampling locations away from known dirty locations “to account for this material” so that samples presented to the court would be clean;³
   • found hidden pits and old contaminated drainage using satellite imagery and resident interviews;⁴
   • took clean samples from the surface because they found contamination at depth;⁵
   • found contamination more than four football fields (approximately 480 meters) away from contamination sources,⁶ and “fairly ubiquitous impact” at other locations,⁷ notwithstanding Chevron’s contention that the pollution had not migrated; and
   • were impressed with current operations by Petroecuador.⁸

   At Chevron’s request, the only courts to have considered the evidence are those in Ecuador. And they—strictly following Ecuadorian civil law and procedural rules—unanimously found Chevron liable. This liability was upheld by Ecuador’s appellate courts, including its National Court, Ecuador’s equivalent to the U.S. Supreme Court in its civil law system.

   Chevron will continue to contest its liability. It argues, for example, that the Government released all claims against it in a 1995 settlement agreement, and that the indigenous plaintiffs are bound by a settlement agreement to which they are not a party. Suffice it to say that the Republic did not, and had no authority or power to, settle claims on behalf of any third party.

   But the point here is a narrow one. Chevron’s predecessor dumped thousands of gallons of crude waste, for more than two decades, into unlined pits in the rain forest and local streams and wetlands, and this contamination continues to this day to haunt the inhabitants of the region.

3. The Republic has taken emergency measures to help its citizens. For its part, the Republic is taking certain emergency remedial action. In the last eight years alone, the Ecuadorian Ministry of the Environment has completed twenty-nine projects to assist the victims of the contamination, including building potable water systems and relocating those individuals directly affected. According to the Responsibility, Stabilization and Fiscal Transparency Act, five percent of the national budget has been placed in a special account and will be used to repair the impact of the environmental and social effect generated by hydrocarbons or mining activities. Additionally, Petroecuador has invested large sums of money and time to dramatically improve the infrastructure left by Chevron’s predecessor. For example, immediately after Texaco left Ecuador, Petroecuador began lining waste pits to prevent seepage of the contaminants and likewise began the process of reinjecting all production water back deep into the ground, a practice commonplace in the United States decades ago.
4. The Ecuadorian Judiciary. Like judicial systems around the globe, including in the United States, the judicial system in Ecuador is not perfect. But it is independent, and it has received international acclaim over the last number of years for its successful implementation of judicial reforms. It is also deserving of respect in the courts of the United States.Notwithstanding Judge Kaplan’s regrettable decision to pass judgment on the Ecuadorian judiciary, the fact is that it was Chevron who persuaded U.S. courts—the same ones that are hearing the RICO action—to dismiss the environmental case from U.S. courts in favor of Ecuador’s courts. And Chevron persuaded the U.S. courts on the basis of overwhelming evidence, including some fourteen affidavits, that Chevron itself presented showing that the Ecuadorian courts are competent and fair. Judge Kaplan has ignored (or perhaps did not know) that Chevron and its predecessor have repeatedly prevailed in Ecuadorian courts, even at times when the Government was its adversary. It is troubling to us that a court of a foreign nation should pass judgment at all on the courts of another sovereign; more particularly, we fail to understand how any court could predicate much of its criticism based on the opinions of a single Ecuadorian “expert witness” when that witness is an avowed political adversary of the current Administration and was a key member of prior governments. This would be equivalent to an Ecuadorian court impugning President Obama based on comments made by a Republic party leader, like Sarah Palin, or impugning his predecessor, President Bush, on the basis of comments by a Democratic party leader.What else did Chevron offer the court? Chevron pointed to the fact that the President appointed a “college roommate” as the General Prosecutor. In fact, the two attended the same university but they surely were never roommates. As the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit observed when rejecting the same argument by Chevron: “we do not view [these circumstances] as probative. After all, presidential transitions in the United States also typically include the replacement of high-level officials, oftentimes with persons who are friends, or have an even closer relationship to the incoming president, and it is not uncommon to see a shift in priorities along with a change in the presidential administration.”⁹ Through its expert, Chevron also submitted newspaper articles (in this case from the Ecuadorian media) but reliance on newspaper articles is, to the say the least, inherently unreliable given the robust commentaries that exist on all sides of an issue. Even former U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador, Heather Hodges, noted that “[t]here is more than a grain of truth to [President] Correa’s observation that the Ecuadorian media play a political role, in this case the role of the opposition.”¹⁰Judge Kaplan previously adopted Chevron’s views regarding the Ecuadorian justice system, and he in fact granted a worldwide injunction against enforcement of the Ecuadorian Judgment.¹¹ The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit quickly and unanimously reversed him.¹² He has since chosen to accept the testimony of a Chevron witness who has admitted to being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and literally millions of dollars in financial benefits by Chevron, yet Judge Kaplan simultaneously chose not to consider evidence relating to Chevron’s own misconduct, including Chevron’s manipulation of the judicial process in the same underlying proceeding that is the very subject of the New York case. I have long admired the U.S. justice system but I join others in my Government who are troubled by the circumstances presented here.
5. Ecuador and the United States. Chevron’s insistence on waging legal, political and public relation scampaigns in lieu of doing what is right has earned it criticism and scorn in some quarters in Ecuador. Many of us have openly sympathized with our indigenous brethren because they deserve to be heard and afforded relief after twenty years of litigation. Our expressions of support are no different than U.S. politicians offering support to the affected citizens of the Gulf Coast after the BP oil spill.¹³ To be clear, however, the criticism is neither anti-American nor even anti-“big oil.” More American retirees have chosen Ecuador as their country of choice than any other non-U.S. country. The climate, beauty, safety, and cost of living in Ecuador act as a magnet for people across the globe. And just like Americans have embraced Ecuador, so too have Ecuadorians embraced America. As the U.S. Ambassador to Quito has observed, Ecuadorians are bonded to the United States, where so many Ecuadorians have been educated and have family. The two countries have common interests, including the global fight against human trafficking and drug trafficking. This relationship has also led to an increase in trade between our countries to record levels and the number of American companies doing business in Ecuador, including of note Coco-Cola’s recent commitment to expand its operation in Ecuador by upward of $1 billion over the next five years. We invite American citizens and businesses to come visit Quito, the Galapagos, Cuenca, or Guayaquil, and see why U.S. citizens and businesses have decided to call Ecuador home too.

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