4-17-07, 8:52 am

Ecuador has launched a popularly supported constitution revision process that will introduce a number of socialist reforms, reports Agence France-Presse.

A Cedatos-Gallup poll of about 40,000 voters indicates that close to 8 in 10 Ecuadorean voters favor a constitutional revision project promoted by newly-elected President Rafael Correa. Other sources say that with more than half of the votes counted as of April 16, the measure is passing by more than 82%. Official results of the vote will be released this week.

Correa won a landslide election victory last fall on a platform to reverse neoliberal economic policies such as 'free trade' and structural adjustment programs imposed by international financial institutions that have forced Ecuador to kill or reduce social programs such as provision of health care, education, and anti-poverty programs.

The Correa administration also announced this past week that Ecuador had finished paying off debts owed to the International Monetary Fund.

Correa promised also to renegotiate oil contracts with foreign controlled oil companies as well.

The constitutional revision process would create a constituent assembly of 130 representatives from around the country to write a new constitution, which would then be submitted for a public referendum in 2008.

Supporters of the constitutional revision process have called for the expansion of participatory democracy by making national lawmakers more directly responsible to their constituencies and ending elitist control of the government through reducing the politicization of the country's courts.

Correa and his supporters believe that these reforms would shift the balance of power away from the traditional political parties dominated by the wealthy elites to the mass of people who have been mainly disfranchised under the current constitution.

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