Ecuador’s president wants to separate himself from Bucale

Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, distanced himself from the methods of his counterpart in El Salvador, Naib Buquel, in his fight against drug gangs, who launched a new attack in the South American country that killed 18 people in six days.

“Ecuador has a different reality. It is a multicultural country, it has different problems, some are the same, others are different and I think our way of thinking is different,” the president said in a statement to the BBC and released by the secretary. . of Communications of the Presidency.

In Bukkel style, Noboa this week declared war on about 20 mafia organizations, with some 20,000 members who have terrorized prisons since Sunday with prison riots, prison guards being held hostage by inmates and attacks with explosives.

Likewise, it will build two “super maximum” security prisons with a capacity of more than 3,000 people, with the aim of isolating the most violent inmates, under its plan to take control of penitentiaries converted into operation centers for drug trafficking. States and Europe. It also plans to install prison ships at sea for the same purpose.

“I think the way we should solve the problems here is the Ecuadorian way, not the Salvadoran way,” insisted Noboa, who is backed by self-proclaimed center-left and right-wing forces.

The Ecuadorian president is often compared to Bucale, criticized by human rights organizations for his arbitrary detention and authoritarianism.

It has imprisoned more than 73,000 suspected criminals under a controversial state of emergency. Images of hundreds of tattooed, barefoot, chained, and bare-chested prisoners released by Buckel himself became his trademark. Some 7,000 innocent people were arrested and released after spending several months in prison.

Noboa said, “We are very strict against terrorism, corruption, but we also think about growth. Development of society, development of services, development of commerce and economy.”

“We can’t just focus on one thing (fighting crime), and I think that’s something I want to separate from El Salvador,” added the Ecuadorian leader, in power since November.

Given the recent wave of violence against the state and pressure from drug traffickers, Noboa assured that he would not give up: “I believe we are going to win and I will not stop fighting until we achieve it,” he said.