People hold an Ecuadorian flag as they participate in a cleanup of the streets in the aftermath of the last days’ protests, after the government of Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno agreed to repeal a decree that ended fuel subsidies, in Quito, Ecuador October 14, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Romero
October 14, 2019
By Alexandra Valencia
QUITO (Reuters) – Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno said on Monday that he would repeal an IMF-backed decree that slashed fuel subsidies “in coming hours,” confirming that he had given into a key demand of protesters who had spent nearly two weeks agitating against it.
Moreno added that a new decree would be issued to ensure that resources go to those who most need it, though he did not specify when. “We have opted for peace,” Moreno said on Twitter.
The comment follows a deal struck with indigenous protesters leaders late on Sunday that ended demonstrations that had rocked the highland capital of Quito and forced Moreno’s government to relocate to safer ground on the coast.
Indigenous protesters who had streamed into Quito from Andean and Amazonian provinces to demand Moreno reinstate the fuel subsidies piled into buses that departed the city on Monday.
“We’re going back to our territories,” said Inti Killa, an indigenous man from the Amazonian region of Napo. “We’ve shown that the union and conviction of the people is a volcano that nobody can stop.”
University students, municipal workers and other residents of Quito cleared burned tires and cobblestones that had been torn from streets of the capital’s downtown district as the smell of tear gas hung in the air.
The protests had grown increasingly chaotic in recent days as the government launched a militarized crackdown to stop extremists whom it blamed for infiltrating the protests and wreaking havoc on the city.
In recent days, authorities reported the office of the comptroller’s office, a local TV station and military vehicles had been set on fire.
(Corrects first graph to show that the decree and not the subsidies were backed by the IMF)
(Reporting By Alexandra Valencia, Additional Reporting and Writing By Mitra Taj; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
