In this talk, hosted by the Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA), independent consultant and journalist Colin Harding offered an insightful analysis of the 2006 presidential elections in Ecuador, in which Rafael Correa was elected as president. Harding described Correa as a good speaker who had appeared as a new face representing the promise of change. In the first part of his campaign, he said, Correa focused on denouncing the inequalities of the system and arguing the need for a new constitution.  His campaign gained such momentum that he was expected to win outright; the ...   more »

Former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) was in London this week giving a talk on NAFTA at the London Business School. The argument of his presentation was that NAFTA was intended to be an instrument to making the Mexican economy more competitive and robust, not an end in and of itself. He presented a number of statistics which demonstrated that Mexico had lost competitiveness in the decade since NAFTA on a number of metrics, and was highly critical of the lack of progress in reforming the Mexican economy further during the Zedillo and Fox administrations...   more »