Ecuadorian high court upholds ruling sentencing journalists to prison and fines

Wednesday, September 21st 2011 - 05:36 UTC

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An Ecuadorian appeals court has upheld criminal libel convictions and three-year prison sentences for three newspaper directors and a former editorialist over a column that called populist President Rafael Correa a dictator. Read full article

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GeoffWard2
Whilst Correa may not be your 'traditional' South American dictator, many of his actions whilst in office have become increasingly 'dictatorial'.
Freedom of a *responsible* press and media is an essential tenet of a non-dictatorial state.
Whether the individual media companies have acted irresponsibly and have misrepresented the president and the country is testable on appeal.
But to issue a counter-claim against the state, and against the president in particular, El Universo would have to show that the composition of the judicial panel was 'stacked' and that their judgement was partial.

Using the 'split' on a populist multitargeted referendum to justify the judicial action is, itself, a warping of the democratic process.

So, if warping of democracy is dictatorial, then what we are seeing is dictatorial.
As yet, it falls a little short of the full-blown 'democratic' dictatorship we see in Ecuador's 'partner in crime', Chavezuela.
Sep 21st, 2011 - 09:33 pm - Link - Report abuse 0
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