rone | arnoldo bucaram ortiz (Reply)

This is just like when Ecuadorians voted to elect Abdalá their president, and i'm sure there are similar examples elsewhere (Berlusconi, maybe?). People all over the world, it seems, are a sucker for a good showman with ambitious delusions of grandeur and minimal qualifications.

Marion Barry was re-elected after getting caught smoking crack, you say? Abdalá Bucaram fled the country and went to Panama after, while serving as mayor of Guayaquil, he was caught embezzling funds from the city funds. He was later given amnesty, returned, ran for president, lost, incurred new corruption charges, fled to Panama again, returned after the charges were dropped, ran for president again, and won on a populist platform. Upon victory, he went back on just about everything he'd promised, and not quite 6 months after he took the presidency, he was removed from the presidency by Congress due to "mental incapacity". He fled for a third and, i hope, final time to Panama 5 days after his removal.

I doubt it'll end as badly here, but only because of how badly it ended over there.