El Comercio - Quito - Ecuador | 29 de mayo del 2008

http://tinyurl.com/4gppcz

[this is a straight google trans. - don't have time to clean it up]

The Assembly debates ownership and expropriation

The minority opposition warns that the majority, through the proposed article, opens the door for a future that is affecting private property.

The Assembly yesterday handled in the first debate, one of the issues that have greater polvareda lifted before and during the period constituent: ownership and expropriation. The discussion in plenary visualizó two readings of two articles submitted by the Bureau of Labor 6, Production and Social Inclusion.

On the one hand, the vision of the minority. According to Lucio Pablo Paredes, the social, environmental and other conditions that give rise to affect private property. "They conditionalities as the property must be consistent with good living or redistributive justice. It opens the door to then say that does not meet those conditions. "

From his perspective, the proposal leaves open the possibility for that, in future, the legislature interpret a law in how it complies with the concepts of the social, environmental, redistributive justice and good living.

Carlos Fadul (PSC), the bureau 6, believes that behind the social function is the intention of violating private property. "It is said that private property must fulfil its social function in accordance with the law. That means they should make a law regulating the social function (...) through this scheme can expropriate what they want. "

Therefore, he argues that the new constitution should note what the social function of different types of ownership, while slits for subsequent legal interpretations.

The officer defended the articles, noting that the criticism of the minority due to a neo-liberal vision of the world, who will fight the new constitution. So said Pedro de la Cruz, head of the Bureau 6, who explained that the land fulfilled its social function when they are grown and respect the environment. "If a land is abandoned, the state has the capacity to expropriate farmers to work."

De la Cruz admitted that cases which may occur step by the expropriation of private property or individuals who do not comply with its environmental and social function.

Cesar Rodriguez (A. Country) asserts that the aim is to avoid areas of owners "who do not fulfil the social role, while there are people who do not have an inch of land to work and produce."

6 The Bureau must process the comments for inclusion in the report for second and final debate on the House.

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I'll just try and clear some of this up with my own commentary.

The law is aimed at agricultural land that is not being used to grow crops, but is vague enough that it could mean any land that isn't fulfilling its "social function" which of course hasn't been clearly defined.

The intent is to free up crop land. Plant it or lose it, in other words, with the expropriated land going to poor farmers. Which poor farmers? I guess that remains to be seen. Nothing in there about cattle ranching. Does raising beef for export fulfill a "social function?" I guess we'll find out.

I can see several consequences: over-planting leading to low market prices; soil depletion due to fear of fallow land being arbitrarily seized; a drop in beef and dairy production due to arbitary land designation based on ownership as opposed to best use; and of course, the inevitable protracted lawsuits that will arise.

The socialist's answer to all this would be, don't worry, we know what we're doing. Isn't that always the case? Also, note the occurance of the word "Neo-liberal" in there. This is their answer to everything: Don't debate your opponent. Just tag him as a Neo-liberal. I guess that's the updated version of "Capitalist Roader."

It is painful to listen to this stuff. You could jump in a time machine and go back to Nicaragua circa 1979, and the language is exactly the same. Nothing has changed.

I recall a controversial theory from many years ago that suggested the rate of social and technological development of nations had more to do with what language they speak than any other factor. The basic premise was that imprecise, inflexible language leads to imprecise, inflexible thought. Makes sense to me, but then my first language is English, so I guess it would.

ebear