Rafael Correa (6 April 1963-) was President of Ecuador from 15 January 2007 to 24 May 2017, succeeding Alfredo Palacio and preceding Lenin Moreno.
Biography[]
Rafael Correa was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador in 1963. He worked as an economist before serving as President Alfredo Palacio's Minister of Economy and Finance from April to August 2005, lobbying Congress for increased spending on health and education projects. He was elected President in 2006 on an anti-establishment political platform, and he moved the country away from neoliberalism by reducing the influence of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He introduced a new constitution and was re-elected in 2009 and 2013 as Latin American politics shifted to the left. Correa increased government spending, raised the minimum wage, and increased Ecuador's standard of living; poverty decreased from 36.7% in 2006 to 22.5% in 2016, while the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants fell from 18 in 2011 to 5.8 in 2017 due to thorough reform of the corrupt police force. He left office in 2017, and, on 3 July 2018, a warrant was issued for his arrest following the kidnapping of his political opponent Fernando Balda. Correa went into exile in Belgium, and, in 2020, he was sentenced in absentia to 8 years in prison for bribery.