Guayaquil, Ecuador, October 28th, 2004

Resolutions made by the CONFEUNASSC as a response to the V round of the Free Trade Agreement Negotiations between the United States of America and the Andean Region

1. The national government has broken a natural process of decision making, which consists out of: 1. information that is necessary to iniciate whatever kind of process of concient participation; 2. a national debate to discuss the pro’s and contra’s of the FTA; 3. a basic agreement with the Ecuadorian people; 4. Instead the government has decided without 98& of the population even knowing what the FTA consists out of.

2. In Ecuador doesn’t exist any political agreement, nor any national agreement, nor any national consensus, and not even a people’s mayority to sign the FTA.

3. It’s evident that a double negotiation is takingplace ; one which receives all the media attention and which demonstrates tables of decision making, where almost no agreements are being reached, because time and contents are imposed by the USA who deliberately wants these negotiations to fail. At the same time Ecuadorian president Gutierrez, his minister Caqui
and the ambassador of the USA have their personal meeting and make decisions, which affect the lives of millions of Ecuadorians.

4. We regret it that no use is being made in this V round of negotiations, of investigations that have been studying the consequences of the FTA for products and economic areas in Ecuador: such as inversions, agriculture, intelectual property, and others. Intentionally the studies made by CEPAL are not being published nor have the papers, that the the different groups formed in the IV round of the FTA have been working on.

5. No negotiation can come at a worse moment than the FTA, in a moment of political instabillity in a country, in which its president is being on trial and facing resignation.

6. The official discourse, and especially of Minister Baki, had a distortioned analysis, saying that the FTA would bring Electric light, drinking water, health cre, education, work, and the improvement of living standards, converting it in some sort of Alladin’s lamp.

7. The comision of the CONFEUNASSC has participated in the alternative space that the V round had for civil society, with its technical and political team, came up with statistics and technical studies and comparative analysis on the impacts of the economy. Because of this work we have suffered persecution and threatening by security forces. Police forces have also impeded 5 buses with compañer@s of us to come to the city of Guayaquil and repressed the pacific demonstration, which we have held the 27th of October.

8. We call out to all the people of the country, to the government and to the national congress, that with or without President Lucio Gutierrez, we are going to reach a national agreement, to stimulate an agenda for this country, an agenda that makes space for the development of the Ecuadorian people, in which sovereignity in a economic, social, political and ethical sense is maintained.

9. We ratify the demand made by the national congress to bring to a political trial Miss Ivonne Baki, for the repression that we have suffered on the 27th of October and for destroying our national sovereigity, selling it to the USA.

10. For the above reasaons we retreat officially our tecnical and political delegation from the negotiations, since we cannot continue working, within a space where decisions are being made in a non-participant way and the nationale government only is able to repress our brothers and sisters which had been on the street, expressing their opinions.

11. We want to thank Guayaquil for its hospitality, Roberto Aspiazu, Cesar Ron, Salomón Gurt, Alejandro Maldonado, Eva García, Camilo Ontaneda, with whom we do not share ideologies nor political ideas, but with whom we do coincide in impulsing a national agenda. We want to thank all those people, negotiating and giving tecnical support, who in their mayority are defending the interests of our country. Graciela Ortega for uniting us, the means of communication, which have demonstrated our intentions to assist in the reunions and our participation.

12. As a civil society, we want to express our solidarity with Roberto López, pharmaceutical entrepreneur from Peru, which has been moved out of the reunions of our neighbouring countries, because of not agreeing with the FTA between Peru and USA>

13. We will continue in constructing a national agenda through the 28 local and alternative governments and 4 prefects that we have in Ecuador, improving the IESS and the social security for farmers, as well as the recollection of signatures to make it possible that the people in this country are the ones that con make a decission about the future for our childrens children.