Noboa Bejarano, Gustavo (1937–)

Gustavo Noboa served as vice-president of Ecuador under Jamil Mahuad (1998–2000) and was named interim president by Congress following a coup that overthrew Mahuad in January 2000. Born in Guayquil and trained as a lawyer, Noboa has served as provincial governor (1983–1984) and academic with ties to the business sector. Noboa resisted presidential politics until 1998, when he joined the Popular Democracy-Christian Democratic Union party (DP-UDC) and was nominated as Jamil Mahuad's vice-president.

Twenty-four hours after the three-man junta had removed Mahuad in January 2000, constitutional rule was restored with the nomination of Noboa, the sixth president in four years. A self-proclaimed political independent and devout Catholic, Noboa promised to restore credibility to Ecuador. He tried to revive the struggling economy by continuing to promote the dollarization of the economy, freeing US$400 million in frozen assets and privatizing state-owned industries. While Noboa briefly stabilized the economy, the country continued to be marred by political instability. After the election of junta leader Lucio Gutierrez in 2002, Noboa left office in January 2003.

In 2003, a judicial investigation declared irregularities in Noboa's handling of the external debt negotiations (July 2000) that cost the country US$9 billion. Protesting innocence and claiming to be the victim of an "unfair persecution" (BBC News 2003), Noboa received political asylum in the Dominican Republic, where he lived from 2003 to 2005. He returned to his hometown of Guayaquil when the Supreme Court cleared his charges but was soon was placed under house arrest. Ten months later he was released but in April 2007 the Supreme Court decided to uphold charges for his mishandling of the foreign debt negotiations (Associated Press 2007). As of 2007 he resides in Guayaquil with his wife, Isabel Baquerizo.

See alsoMahuad, Jamil .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gerlach, Allen. Indians, Oil, and Politics: A Recent History of Ecuador. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Press, 2003.

Political Database of the Americas. Georgetown University. 2007. http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Executive/Ecuador/pres.html.

                                      Suzanne Casolaro