This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, May 7th, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown.

Raphael Correa won re-election to the presidency of Ecuador, what does that mean for Korea's so far successful

fight to centralize authority in the executive?

Gabrielle Calderon, editor of El Kato.org, the Cato Institute's Spanish website, comments.

Vau Correia got to power and won a campaign on a moderate speech, moderate

centered left and then once he came into power he proposed to have a

to hold a constituent assembly to write a new constitution. There were

elections for the members of this

constituent assembly which was in the end constituted by more than 80%

majority of Korea's party. And they wrote a new constitution which was then approved by a slightly declining majority of between 62, I forget 62 or 67% of the electorate.

So we had a new constitution since October of 2008 and since

then there's been de facto Congress that has been controlled by the executive and this Congress has had an 80%

majority of the government's party and they have not basically they have not fiscalized any of the government acts and so it's been all

under the control of the

electoral tribunal's delegation, the electoral tribunal delegation,

the electoral tribunal delegation,

and it also includes the constitutional court and they also replace the Supreme Court judges.

So this is all been, this is all now under the control of the president and there are I believe there is a sense

in the in the press that there are ever more less opportunities to express dissent.

What is the Constitution that's been implemented?

What has it done with regard to individual rights?

Well the new Constitution with regard to individual rights, Okay, the Constitution is very,

...