GettyEcuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has said he wants to change his country’s constitution to allow the presence of foreign military bases.
He made the proposal 15 years after the last US troops left the Manda base on Ecuador’s Pacific coast and returned it to Ecuador’s military.
President Noboa argues that Ecuador needs foreign military aid to fight transnational crime gangs that use the country as a major transit route for drugs smuggled from South America to Europe and the US.
The 36-year-old leader declared war on gangs in January, but gang-related violence continues to plague cities such as Manda, Duran and Guayaquil.
Noboa made the announcement in a video recorded at the Manda base that was uploaded to X formerly known as Twitter.
In it, he criticizes then-President Rafael Correa’s decision in 2008 not only to not renew the agreement under which the US had leased the Manda base, but also to enshrine a ban on any foreign military presence in the constitution.
“They claimed that Ecuador would regain its sovereignty, but what they did was hand it over to the drug traffickers,” Noboa says in the video without specifically naming Correa.
“In a transnational conflict, we need a national and international response,” he adds.
He said he would send the partial constitutional reform to Ecuador’s National Assembly, which would have to vote for it to pass.
But before it can be voted on by lawmakers, the change to the constitution will have to be approved by the constitutional court.
Any change to the constitution must also be submitted to the Ecuadorian people in a referendum in order to take effect.
This is not the first change to the constitution proposed by President Noboa.
In April, his government put 11 measures to popular vote, of which nine were approved.
Many of these measures were also security-related, including allowing soldiers to patrol the streets and extraditing criminals to stand trial in the US.
President Noboa came to power less than a year ago after snap elections following the resignation of President Guillermo Lasso.
Noboa has already said he will run for re-election in February 2025, and Monday’s announcement is seen as an attempt to be seen as a decisive and active leader, despite the gang violence that continues to ravage Ecuador.
Polls show that there has been a decline in the president’s approval ratings in recent months.
Analysts say this is mainly due to the lack of results in the “war” he has declared on criminal groups operating in Ecuador.
The port cities, especially Guayaquil and Duran, have seen the number of murders and kidnappings skyrocket.
Before the US handed over the Manda base in 2009, it was an important outpost for anti-narcotics operations in South America.
President Noboa has long argued that the eviction of the US military was a mistake that led to the rise of transnational criminal groups in Ecuador.
