Lenin Moreno ticks off Correa’s statement on disability
Ecuadornews:
The president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, today called “Canallescas” (malicious) a recent statement by former head of state Rafael Correa about the current governor’s disability caused him a “bitterness” that leads him to supposedly act in a “pathological” way against him.
“The fact of qualifying the possibility that (a person) turns into a perverse bitterness his disability seems to me to be a terrible discrimination,” Moreno said in a meeting with the foreign press about recent statements to a Spanish media outlet of Correa, which he claims to be a political persecuted.
The former president assured the media that “sometimes people who have suffered a tragedy like the one he suffered, he was a sportsman, they put a bullet in his back and he was sentenced to a wheelchair, they keep a bitterness, a frustration with life, a frustration towards others who have not suffered that misfortune that when they have power they deform that bitterness “.
“We believe that the matter is also going on, because it is too serious already, it is pathological,” Correa added, always according to that medium.
Moreno was left in a wheelchair in 1998 after suffering a point-blank shot in Quito by criminals who assaulted him, losing mobility in both legs.
The president referred today to that episode in his life and revealed that when he was shot and forced to use a wheelchair, he had “a new opportunity in life”.
And he pointed out that at that time he was an entrepreneur “who looked up, up ahead”, but then he learned that “there are human beings who have very difficult moments, to whom we must love, respect and help them to move forward” and that the new circumstance metaphorically helped him to “look from below”.
Moreno, who was vice president during the first years of the decade of Correa’s government, considered that comments about his disability offend a whole group.
“To use a racket of that type, it seems to me that it is unfortunate and less than a former president of the Republic,” Moreno added.
The 65-year-old ruler considered that “certain behaviors of perversity and criminality cannot be attributed to their origin in aspects of this type, just as I could not say that certain types of criminal behavior originated in family and social aspects”
Moreno assured that he has no room for bitterness and declared himself a “happy person”, at peace with himself and trying to act according to his principles.
The current president, who was a special UN envoy on Disability and Accessibility, has been recognized in Ecuador and in world instances for his work on behalf of the disabled with the “Manuela Espejo” and “Joaquín Gallegos Lara” missions.
Correa has been prosecuted in a case of kidnapping of a former opposition member in 2012, and is a fugitive from the Ecuadorian Justice that has requested Interpol an international arrest warrant for his failure to appear before a court in Quito. (I)