Ecuador's Correa: Bomb Blasts Part of Soft Coup Strategy

Double bomb blasts in the city of Guayaquil earlier this week were part of an ongoing soft coup plot to overthrow Ecuador's progressive government, the left-leaning president, Rafael Correa, warned Friday.

Publicly owned newspaper El Telegrafo and the private El Universo were both hit with “leaflet bombs” late Wednesday night.

In an interview with local media, the president said the blasts were part of a nation-wide plot to destabilize the country by the right wing.

By early 2017 Ecuadoreans will go to the polls in a general election, where the opposition hopes to challenge Correa’s PAIS Alliance. Although there is over a year before the country is set to vote, Correa says the opposition is already laying the groundwork for efforts to destabilize the country.

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He continued by warning that some elements of Ecuador’s left-wing have been manipulated into siding with the right.

“In the opposition there is a mixture: the right-wing that knows what it will do to regain power, and a (sector of the) left that has been manipulated by the right,” he said.

A group claiming to be from the left has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s bombings.

Local authorities are currently launching a deeper investigation into the obscure group that has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

"We are looking into the evidence and from that we will be able to determine the identity of the perpetrators,” said Col. Edison Gallardo earlier this week.

The group's name, the National Liberation Front, is an allusion to other clandestine armed organizations. However, the communique released by the group uses language strikingly dissimilar to that used by other clandestine armed organizations in Latin America and reads more like a manifesto from a liberal organization than a revolutionary organization.

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