Ecuadorean president forced out

QUITO, Ecuador — President Lucio Gutiérrez was ousted by Congress yesterday after a week of increasingly violent protests in which he was accused of abusing his power by meddling with Ecuador's top court.

Gutiérrez, the third president of the Andean nation to be toppled amid popular unrest in eight years, was replaced by his vice president after a day of escalating clashes between opposing protesters. Two people were reported killed.

A military helicopter flew him out of the presidential palace in colonial downtown Quito after 60 congressmen from the 100-seat chamber voted to oust him for "abandoning his post."

Brazil's foreign ministry said later that Gutiérrez was in the Brazil Embassy in Quito. Several hundred people gathered outside the embassy and the ambassador's residency in the city's upscale northern neighborhoods last night, shouting insults against Gutiérrez and demanding he be denied exile and turned over to Ecuadorean authorities.

Congress named Vice President Alfredo Palacio to serve out the rest of Gutiérrez's four-year term that expires in January 2007, but that move also drew immediate counter-protests.

Plumes of smoke rose over parts of the city as rival groups of protesters rioted. Anti-government demonstrators broke into the Congress building at one point, smashing windows and chairs in the chamber.

Opposition congressmen, who accused Gutiérrez of being a dictator after his December move to fill the Supreme Court with political allies, said he effectively had abandoned his post by failing to carry out his duties properly.

The armed forces, traditional arbiters of power, abandoned Gutiérrez, who had refused to quit.

"We have been forced to withdraw support from the president in order to ensure public safety," said Gen. Victor Hugo Rosero, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Gutiérrez himself helped topple President Jamil Mahuad in 2000. Gutiérrez was jailed briefly for leading a coup and was elected in late 2002 with support largely from the poor.

Although the economy in the oil-rich country, also the world's biggest exporter of bananas, is flourishing, there has been little relief for the poor. As a result, Gutiérrez's support plummeted.

A man of dark, native Indian features, he promised voters a change after centuries of domination by a white elite.

Street protests erupted in Quito a week ago to protest a Supreme Court decision to drop corruption charges against former President Abdala Bucaram, a key political ally of Gutiérrez.

Bucaram, known as "El Loco," was ousted from the presidency by Congress in 1997 for "mental incompetence."

Thousands of Gutiérrez supporters armed with machetes and guns had ridden buses into Quito yesterday, but were met by crowds of anti-government protesters who tried to block their path downtown.

Congress fired the newly appointed Supreme Court on Sunday, two days after Gutiérrez dismissed it himself in an attempt to defuse the crisis.

The Organization of American States called a special meeting for today to discuss the situation. The United States urged "all Ecuadoreans to come together to peacefully resolve their issues."

New President Palacio, 66, is a physician who has authored several medical books. He worked at hospitals in Cleveland and in St. Louis in the late 1960s and early 1970s, according to Ecuador's government Web site. He served as minister of public health from 1994 to 1996.

For much of the day, about 500 protesters kept Palacio from leaving a journalism school where congressmen were forced to meet to vote Gutiérrez out of office because the entrance to Congress had been blocked.

Rosero announced after the vote that the military had withdrawn its support for Gutiérrez.

Earlier yesterday, in another blow to Gutiérrez, Gen. Jorge Poveda resigned as chief of the national police. "I cannot continue to be a witness to the confrontation with the Ecuadorean people," he said. "I am not a violent man."

The protests outside the Brazil Embassy were reported by The Associated Press.