New leaders needed for region, says Ecuadorian president
New leaders needed for region, says Ecuadorean president
OCTOBER 27, 2014 BY 0 COMMENTS
Rafael Correa (photo, Paula Dupraz-Dobias)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – “Latin American leaders are often castigated, as caudillos or caciques“, Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, said Friday in Geneva. “But leaders are desirable.”
Correa was on a visit to Geneva that included a speech at the Palais des Nations to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Unctad, and a visit to Cern. He told a heavily Ecuadorean audience at the Graduate Institute 24 October that that he hoped there would be many more leaders to drive Latin American integration.
President wants caps on executive salaries
Ecuador’s minister of international trade, Francesco Rivadeneira, meanwhile, confirmed to GenevaLunch that the government is still discussing a proposal by President Correa to impose caps on executive salaries.
Last month the president said a new labour law should limit top salaries to not more than 20 times the lowest wages at a company.
Swiss voters in November 2013 rejected a proposal to limit executive salaries to a maximum of 12 times the lowest paid employees, a ratio that would have gone far beyond any other European controls.
The 1:12 initiative formulated by the Swiss Young Socialists was part of a backlash over a CHF72 million payout to outgoing Novartis CEO, Daniel Vassella. Earlier in 2013 Swiss voters strongly backed what was popularly called the “fat cat” initiative, giving company shareholders a vote on executive pay and ending lucrative golden handshakes and severance pay.
Ecuador’s Rivadeneira says that the issue is a matter of “justice and equity” and that “the interest is to create a society based on equity, as Ecuador is now doing.”
Latin American integration “improving”
Latin American integration remains a key issue for President Correa. It had experienced “problems” but the situation is improving, he told the Graduate Institute crowd.
Integration had suffered “bad luck”, first with the death of regional group Unasur’s first secretary general, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, and then with that of President Hugo Chavez, “one of the biggest promoters of Latin American integration”.
Unasur, or the Union of South American Nations, a political union integrating two regional customs unions, Mercosur and the Andean Community of Nations, and their 12 South American member states, has its administrative center in Ecuador’s capital, Quito.
Unasur’s new administrative headquarters is expected to be inaugurated in December in Mitad del Mundo, near Quito.
