3 Claim to Lead Ecuador as Crisis Grows

President Abdala Bucaram maintained a tenuous hold on power here Friday night, daring his opponents to challenge his authority after protests in the capital left one youth dead. Although three people claimed to be president of this country, no one was clearly in charge.

Police used tear gas to turn back demonstrators who marched from Congress toward the presidential palace on Friday afternoon to demand that Bucaram, the president Ecuadoreans elected last year, step down. A tear gas canister fatally wounded one young demonstrator.

The marchers were attempting to enforce Thursday’s congressional vote to remove Bucaram for mental incompetence. Congressional leader Fabian Alarcon, elected interim president by Congress, led the march.

After the demonstrators were halted, Bucaram left the presidential palace where he had barricaded himself after Congress’ vote and boarded an airplane, provoking rumors that he planned to resign. However, on arriving in the coastal city of Guayaquil, his home town, he blew a kiss at a television reporter and said, “I am still president.”

At an impromptu news conference, he challenged Alarcon to come after him in Guayaquil.

“It is a very confusing situation,” said Benjamin Ortiz, editor at the opposition newspaper Hoy. “The only thing that is certain is uncertainty.”

That describes much of the six months since Bucaram’s inauguration.

The antics of the quirky populist candidate who delighted voters with his off-key rock songs quickly wore thin when he continued them in office, analysts said.

He lunched at the presidential palace with Lorena Bobbitt, an Ecuadorean famous for cutting off her American husband’s penis. He promoted his CD “A Crazy Man in Love” by dancing on stage with scantily clad showgirls.

He was proud of his nickname--”El Loco,” the Crazy One--and tolerated a similarly flamboyant style among his Cabinet ministers, one of whom became known for pistol-whipping his critics.

But the outrageousness was soon overshadowed by charges of corruption at levels shocking by even Ecuadorean standards.

News media questioned how much of the money from a presidential telethon to buy toys for poor children was actually spent on toys. They began to investigate the financing of his giveaway programs--from milk to telephone lines to backpacks for schoolchildren.

Business people traded stories of demands that they contribute to the president’s political party in order to do business with the government. Newspapers published front-page stories alleging that Bucaram’s teenage son threw a party to celebrate making his first million dollars.

The president responded by bashing his rivals and the rich, a tactic that proved successful during his campaign.

Late last month, Bucaram was notified that a political rival was suing him for slander because the president had accused him of stealing $5 million from a highway construction project.

Then, on top of the antics and alleged corruption, populist Bucaram last month announced an economic austerity program.

Bucaram inherited an economy still reeling from a 1995 recession and liquidity crisis. Inflation was more than 25% a year, and the currency, the sucre, lost nearly one-quarter of its value in 1995.

To halt that slide and control inflation, Bucaram announced a classic free-market reform: raising the prices of government services and keeping down wages. Students and unions threatened a general strike.

Even before the current crisis, analysts feared a run on the sucre if Bucaram faltered in his attempt to implement the unpopular program.

As the crisis continued, pressure increased on the armed forces to take a stand, especially as apparently false rumors spread that Peruvian troops were massing on the border.

“The armed forces are going to have to act as arbiters,” Ortiz said. However, the military has resisted--and earned the praise of U.S. officials--apparently out of concern about reviving Ecuador’s old image of a country with a propensity for coups d’etat and military rule.

As of Friday, each of the three leaders claiming to be Ecuador’s president had outlined plans for consolidating his--or her--position.

Bucaram said he will seek support on the coast, in a statement that provoked fears he will try to revive old regional rivalries between the highland capital and the seaport in order to stay in power.

Alarcon announced plans to meet today with Congress to name a Cabinet. He decided against a threatened hunger strike in order to be in good health to do his duties, he told a television interviewer.

The third, Vice President Rosalia Arteaga, who declared herself president after Congress dismissed Bucaram, said she remained open to talks with the two men and representatives of civic organizations in order to resolve the crisis.

“We cannot allow the struggle against corruption and nepotism to become a political game,” she warned.