I am certain that Correa heard an earful about how the Acosta plank would lessen the appetite of foreigners to invest. This might have hardened Correa's resolve to keep the deadline in place and keep pressure on Acosta, knowing he couldn't complete his task and thus couldn't jeopardize Correa's vision of foreign investment rescuing the economy.

Good points.

Whenever something unexpected comes along, I try to ask myself: "what's changed? How is this time different than the last?"

OK. Last time, Correa needed Acosta's support. Now that the constitution is toast, he's expendable. This is all the more plausible if you grant that Correa really didn't grasp the extent of the damage the Mining Mandate would cause, and may have felt betrayed by Acosta, whose superior knowledge (as former mines minister) he relied on [1]. Acosta, having no political ambitions beyond his green agenda, saw his opportunity and took it. Either that, or Correa just played dumb and fed Acosta the rope to hang himself (at our expense, I might add).

Either way, the shoe's on the other foot now. Acosta is the chief bagholder for a failed constitution, and Correa comes out smelling like a rose. No matter that as Commander in Chief he holds the ultimate responsibility because in Ecuador, as elsewhere, the buck doesn't stop here anymore. It stops over there somewhere... on that other guy's desk.

[1] This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. I have a friend who's a senior bond wonk at a big Canadian bank. He can tell you everything you want to know about multi-million dollar bond deals.... but the stuff we do here is completely opaque to him. That's not to say he couldn't learn (and fast) - just that he's a specialist who's entirely absorbed in something else, and as such, his natural inclination is to rely on another specialist to manage it for him.

ebear