Rafael Correa

Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado (born 6 April 1963 in Guayaquil) is an Ecuadorian economist who led the country as president for a decade under the banner of the Alianza PAIS movement and what he called the "Citizens' Revolution" (Revolución Ciudadana). Trained as an economist with a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, he briefly served as finance minister in 2005 before winning the presidency in the November 2006 runoff against Álvaro Noboa.

Correa convened a Constituent Assembly that drafted a new constitution, approved by referendum in September 2008, which expanded executive powers, recognized rights of nature, and reorganized the state. He was re-elected in 2009 and again in 2013. His government significantly increased social spending, reduced poverty rates, and invested heavily in infrastructure, roads, and education, financed in part by high oil revenues and Chinese loans.

His tenure was also marked by sustained confrontation with private media, leading to defamation suits against journalists and the 2013 Communications Law that critics described as restrictive. In 2008 Ecuador defaulted on roughly $3.2 billion in "illegitimate" foreign bonds. In foreign policy, Correa aligned Ecuador with Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba through ALBA, expelled the US military from the Manta air base (lease ended 2009), and granted asylum in Ecuador's London embassy to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from 2012 until his successor revoked it in 2019.

Barred by term limits from running in 2017, Correa backed Lenín Moreno, who quickly broke with him politically. Correa relocated to Belgium. In April 2020 an Ecuadorian court convicted him in absentia of bribery (the "Sobornos" case) and sentenced him to eight years, a ruling he rejects as politically motivated. He remains an influential voice on the Latin American left through commentary and the correísta faction, including the Citizen Revolution Movement (RC) led publicly by figures such as Andrés Arauz and Luisa González.