Correa

Shades of Chavez in Ecuador's Front-Runner

Posted by Billbar from Los Angeles Times

An audacious South American politician has made an unflattering comparison between President Bush and the devil, threatened to nationalize oil production and expressed his commitment to popular revolution. And it's not Hugo Chavez. The rhetoric of Rafael Correa, the favorite in today's presidential election here, could pass for that of Chavez, the Venezuelan leader. Correa, a 43-year-old U.S.-educated economist, has struck a stridently anti-U.S. tone in a campaign in which he has come from nowhere in the polls three months ago to assume a commanding lead. In a Sept. 27 television interview, when asked about Chavez's description of Bush as the devil in his address to the U.N. General Assembly last month, Correa responded: "The devil is evil, but intelligent. I believe Bush is a tremendously dimwitted president who has done great damage to his country and to the world."

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