Rafael Correa

Explore about the Famous Politician Rafael Correa, who was born in Ecuador on April 6, 1963. Analyze Rafael Correa’s net worth, age, bio, birthday, dating, height-weight, wiki. Investigate who is Rafael Correa dating now? Look into this article to know how old is Rafael Correa?

Rafael Correa Biography

Politician who became President of the Republic of Ecuador in 2007 and led the country in economic and social reform. He has been accused of being an authoritarian leader but many have still credited him with reducing poverty and unemployment in his country.

He received a degree in economics from Belgium’s Universite Catholique de Louvain and went on to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He served as both director of the Ecuadorian Ministry of Education and Culture and Minister of Finance before becoming President of the Republic of Ecuador and President pro tempore of the Union of South American Nations.

He married Anne Malherbe Gosselin in Belgium. Together, the couple had three children: Anne Doninique, Miguel, and Sofia.

He was a political ally of the late Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez.

Correa describes himself as an advocate of “socialism of the 21st century”, a term referring to a form of democratic socialism previously used by Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. The Economist described Correa as “a left-wing populist”, while The Washington Post has characterized Correa’s ideological approach as being “economically populist, socially conservative, [and] quasi-authoritarian”. The scholars of political science George Philip and Francisco Panizza claimed that like his allies Morales and Chávez, Correa should be categorized as a populist, because he appealed “directly to the people against their countries’ political and economic order, divided the social field into antagonistic camps and promised redistribution and recognition in a newly founded political order.”

During his first months in office, Correa’s government doubled the monthly poverty assistance payments to $30, as well as doubling the credits for housing loans and reducing the electricity rates for individuals on low incomes. He described these wealth redistribution policies as “21st century socialism”, a term borrowed from Chávez.

Correa’s father was Rafael Correa Icaza, born in the Province of Los Ríos, Ecuador, (23 March 1934 – 10 June 1995) while his mother is Norma Delgado Rendón (b.1 September 1939). He had three siblings; Fabricio Correa, Pierina Correa and Bernardita Correa. Having grown up in the coastal city of Guayaquil, he has described his family background as being that of the “lower middle class”.

Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado (Spanish pronunciation: [rafaˈel βiˈsente koˈre.a ðelˈɣaðo] ; born 6 April 1963) is an Ecuadorian politician and economist who served as President of Ecuador from 2007 to 2017. The leader of the PAIS Alliance political movement from its foundation until 2017, Correa is a democratic socialist and his administration focused on the implementation of left-wing policies. Internationally, he served as president pro tempore of the Union of South American Nations.

When attending UCSG, he was elected President of the Association of Students of Economy, Audit and Administration (AEAA) and, later on, President of the Federation of Students (FEUC) of the same education center, a position which in 1986 allowed him to preside over the Private Universities Students Federation of Ecuador (FEUPE in Spanish).

While living in Guayaquil, Correa was highly involved in the Boy Scout program. At the age of 17, his family faced financial hardship, but a family friend was able to pay for him to be educated at an elite local school, where he excelled. During his secondary studies he was president of the Lasallian Student Cultural Association (“ACEL” in Spanish). Correa then obtained a scholarship to study at the Catholic University of Santiago de Guayaquil (UCSG), a private higher education institution in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he obtained an undergraduate degree in economics in 1987.

Following the conclusion of his studies at UCSG, Correa worked for a year in a mission at a kindergarten run by the Salesian order in Zumbahua, Cotopaxi Province, where he taught Catholicism and mathematics. It was here that he furthered his faith in Catholicism, and developed a working understanding of the Quechua language spoken by most of Ecuador’s indigenous people. In Zumbahua he became aware of the widespread poverty that afflicted Ecuador’s indigenous population. He then secured a scholarship to study economics further at UCLouvain in Belgium, where he met Anne Malherbe Gosselin, whom he married and had three children. He later received a Master of Arts in Economics from UCLouvain in June 1991.

Between 1992 and 1993, during the presidency of Sixto Durán Ballén, Correa was a director at the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) in Ecuador, tasked with administrative oversight and supervision of improvement programs for the national educational system. The improvement programs were funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

He established a committee to investigate any alleged crimes within the banking sector that took place between 1998 and 2002 and which led to the country’s banking crisis and bailout.

Correa was able to afford a university education with the aid of funding grants. He would then continue his studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned a Master of Science in Economics in May 1999, and a PhD in Economics in October 2001. During graduate studies, he came under the particular influence of the laissez-faire critical economist Joseph Stiglitz. Correa’s adviser at the University of Illinois was Werner Baer, who later commented that at the time Correa did not seem anti-capitalist but was concerned by uneven income distribution in society.

Correa was highly critical of the Ecuadorian press, stating that it “does not inform, it defends the pockets of its owners”. Accusing the press of lying and slandering him, he proposed a law that would ban those working in the financial sector from financing media outlets. Paraphrasing Tony Blair, he stated that the Ecuadorian press acted as “a group of wild beasts”. He has also regularly criticized it as “…mediocre, incompetent, inaccurate, lying and is a part of the structure of corruption and accomplice of the national disaster.” Following the 2002 Venezuelan coup d’état attempt, Correa stated that he would close down any Ecuadorean media outlet that called for a coup against his government.

Correa argued for reforms to be made to a fund that had been established on the advice of the International Monetary Fund in 2002 to collect and distribute Ecuador’s oil revenue. Correa believed that the fund unjustly allocated the wealth generated by the country’s oil; 70% of it went to pay back foreign debt, while 20% was set aside to stabilize oil revenues and 10% was spent on health and education programs. Given that over half of Ecuador’s population were deemed to be living in poverty, Correa convinced Congress that a greater share of the fund should be spent on social programs to alleviate the effects of poverty; as a result, the portion spent on debt repayment was reduced to 50% and that allocated to health and education was increased to 30%. The World Bank responded by cancelling its previously approved loan to Ecuador, with Palacio holding Correa responsible for this action.

In 2005, Correa was appointed to the position of economy and finance minister in the government of President Alfredo Palacio, having previously advised Palacio before his ascension to the presidency. As finance minister, Correa met with a number of Latin American presidents, including Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. In this position, he also publicly criticized the United States, describing U.S. President George W. Bush as “dim witted”, and stating that Chávez’s comparison of Bush with the Devil was unfair to the latter. He therefore established himself as both a political maverick and a staunch critic of economic neoliberalism.

Born to a lower middle-class mestizo family in Guayaquil, Correa studied economics at the Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil, the University of Louvain (UCLouvain), and the University of Illinois, where he received his PhD. Returning to Ecuador, in 2005 he became the Minister for the Economy under President Alfredo Palacio, successfully lobbying Congress for increased spending on health and education projects.

On this point he mentioned that in the year 2006 75% of the Ecuadorian petroleum went to United States, in exchange for nothing. “Now we have 50% of the committed petroleum with China, in exchange for thousands of millions of dollars to finance the development of this country.

The health budget was $561 million in 2006 and was increased to $1,774 million in 2012, which is 6.8% of the national budget.] The Ecuadorian government signed an agreement with the Cuban government to allow public company Enfarma to massively produce medicine at low cost. Working hours for doctors were increased to 40 hours/week and their salaries were also increased.Mobile hospitals have been implemented. Another program has been implemented in order to increase the rate of return of medics amongst Ecuadorian emigrants.

Rafael Correa was officially declared President on 4 December 2006 by the electoral court. He was sworn in on 15 January 2007 as the 56th President of Ecuador, the seventh to occupy the post since the legislature removed President Abdalá Bucaram 10 years earlier in the midst of a debt crisis that had devastated the country. His inauguration was attended by most regional leaders, as well as the Iranian president and the Spanish Crown Prince. Declaring that “Ecuador had voted for itself”, Correa proclaimed that his election meant an end to neoliberalism in the country. Invoking the name of African-American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., he also spoke out against racial discrimination toward indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorians in his speech. During the ceremony he wore a shirt decorated with motifs from the prehistoric Jama Coaque culture.

In the October 2006 general election, Correa obtained second place (23%) behind banana tycoon Álvaro Noboa (27%). The situation led to a run-off election, in which Correa portrayed Noboa as an exploitative oligarch and Noboa portrayed Correa as a dangerous leftist with strong links to Venezuela. Correa won the subsequent November 2006 runoff election with 57% of the vote. Correa was the first leftist to assume the presidency since Ecuador’s transition to representative democratic governance in 1979.

Correa also proposed strategies for reducing the burden of Ecuador’s foreign debt service through compulsory debt restructuring. He indicated that his top priority would be spending on social programs rather than servicing Ecuador’s debt. On foreign policy, Correa commented on Ecuador’s relations with its neighbor Colombia. Correa stressed Ecuador’s aversion to becoming involved in Colombia’s domestic conflict. In October 2006, Correa added that he would “pursue and capture” FARC members if they enter Ecuador. He also declared that he condemned their kidnappings, violations of human rights and bombings. In addition to his platform on economic and social policy, Correa’s ability to communicate with a large majority of Ecuador’s indigenous population in their own language also differentiated him from other candidates. He learned Quichua in his youth during a year he spent volunteering in a remote highland town.

However, the Alianza PAIS movement signed a political alliance with the Ecuadorian Socialist Party, which did present candidates for Congress. On 31 July 2006, Alianza PAIS also signed a Programmatic Political Agreement with the Communist Party of Ecuador when Correa was postulated for candidate for president. Other parties that joined Alianza PAIS coalition in a runoff election included Democratic People’s Movement, Democratic Left, Pachakutik, and the Partido Roldista Ecuatoriano.

Correa decided to campaign for the presidency in the 2006 presidential election, although at the time he was a largely unknown figure among the Ecuadorean public. Employing Vinicio Alvarado as his campaign manager, Correa’s campaign emphasised his personality as a macho family man of modest origins who was angry with the country’s political elites. During his campaign, he described himself as the head of “a citizen’s revolution” against the established political parties and corrupt elites, and depicted himself as the leader of a second independence movement devoted to freeing Ecuador from American imperialism. Touring the country aboard a motorized caravan attending political rallies, he emphasized this opposition using campaign songs such as Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, as well as through the slogan “Se viene el correazo” (“Here comes a whipping”), a pun on the fact that “Correa” can be translated as whip.

Between 2006 and 2016, poverty decreased from 36.7% to 22.5% and annual per capita GDP growth was 1.5 percent (as compared to 0.6 percent over the prior two decades). At the same time, inequalities, as measured by the Gini coefficient, decreased from 0.55 to 0.47.

Correa won the presidency in the 2006 general election on a platform criticizing the established political elites. Taking office in January 2007, he sought to move away from Ecuador’s neoliberal economic model by reducing the influence of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. He declared Ecuador’s national debt illegitimate and announced that the country would default on over $3 billion worth of bonds; he pledged to fight creditors in international courts and succeeded in reducing the price of outstanding bonds by more than 60%. He oversaw the introduction of a new constitution, being re-elected in 2009 and again 2013 general election.

Upon his election, Correa began a weekly Saturday radio show, “The President Talks to his People”, in which he discussed the week’s events and answered questions from journalists. In August 2007 he signed Ecuador to TeleSUR, the pan-Latin American media service. Correa decided to create Ecuador TV, the first state-owned channel in the country, with the announced intention of producing television with better quality standards than the private channels. Also, newspaper El Telegrafo was purchased and became state-owned. Radio Pública, El Ciudadano, ANDES and PP were also created under Correa’s presidency and are administered by state agencies.

On 10 May 2007, Correa filed a lawsuit against Francisco Vivanco Riofrío of the board of directors of the Quito-based La Hora newspaper, over an editorial published in the paper on 9 March. The editorial, titled “Official Vandalism”, said that Correa intended to rule Ecuador “with turmoil, rocks and sticks”. It described the president’s behavior as “shameful.” Correa’s suit is based on Article 230 of the country’s penal code that sets prison penalties of up to two years for contempt, expressed in “threats or libel that would offend the president.”

Between 2007 and 2014, poverty decreased from 36.7% to 22.5%. At the same time, inequalities, as measured by the Gini index, decreased from 0.55 to 0.47. Between 2006 and 2016, poverty decreased from 36.7% to 22.5% and annual per capita GDP growth was 1.5 percent (as compared to 0.6 percent over the prior two decades). At the same time, inequalities – as measured by the Gini index – decreased from 0.55 to 0.47.

Between 2007 and 2014, poverty decreased from 36.7% to 22.5%. At the same time, inequalities, as measured by the Gini index, decreased from 0.55 to 0.47. Between 2006 and 2016, poverty decreased from 36.7% to 22.5% and annual per capita GDP growth was 1.5 percent (as compared to 0.6 percent over the prior two decades). At the same time, inequalities – as measured by the Gini index – decreased from 0.55 to 0.47.

In June and July 2007 in several communities of the Amazonía and domestic South, protests were carried out against oil and mining concessions to transnational companies (PetroChina, PetroBras and mining Canadian). According to some media, the Government repressed abusing from the force to these mobilizations.

On 3 August 2007, Correa ordered the deportation of Sean O’Hearn-Gimenez, director of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, saying that he would not allow “gringuitos” (literally, “little gringos”) to tell Ecuadorians what to do or to pursue local fishermen. However, a local newspaper noted that O’Hearn-Gimenez had signed a 5-year agreement with Ecuador’s own Environmental Police rather than acting unilaterally (as a foreigner with no authority of his own), and was married to an Ecuadorian. The deportation was ordered because Sea Shepherd, in partnership with the Ecuadorian National Environmental Police, exposed and stopped the biggest shark-fin shipment in the port city of Manta. Correa later rescinded the extradition order because O’Hearn-Gimenez was married to an Ecuadorian woman. All the arrested fishermen were released, too, and the confiscated shark fins returned to them.

The Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly first convened on 29 November 2007 in Montecristi, and was given six months to write a new constitution, with a possible two-month extension. When Ecuador began the process of writing a new constitution, they received help from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund to draft environmental laws giving nature and ecosystems rights.

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