BY JANE BUSSEY

 QUITO, Ecuador -- Scattered protests flared across the country Thursday as
 unrest continued over the government's radical bid to control an economy spinning
 out of control by adopting a symbol of stability -- the dollar.

 President Jamil Mahuad surprised the nation Sunday with his announcement that
 Ecuador would adopt the dollar, a move seen as the president's bid to buy time
 for a government teetering on the brink of collapse.

 Debate over the controversial measure raged nonstop on Ecuadorean television,
 and on the street, while the country's indigenous movement, the Conaie, and the
 Coordination of Social Movements met for a third day in a ``People's Parliament''
 to plan measures to counter Mahuad's plan.

 ``We are going to defeat this dying government,'' declared Antonio Vargas, vice
 president of the parliament, at a meeting in the auditorium of the Polytechnical
 University. The parliament has demanded that the Mahuad government resign
 because of incompetence. It says the plan will ``dollarize poverty, privatize wealth
 and repress the resistance.''

 WEEKEND PROTESTS

 The People's Parliament is calling for a coalition of religious, military and civilian
 representatives to lead the nation.

 Indigenous groups and students are gearing up for weekend confrontations with
 the government. About four million of Ecuador's 12 million people are considered
 part of the indigenous population, and they have the capacity to mobilize
 widespread protests. Vargas announced that Quito taxi drivers would join the
 protest on Monday.

 Protesters, saying they would set up roadblocks on provincial highways, began a
 march on Quito, where an anti-government rally is planned for Saturday. Mahuad
 postponed an address to Congress that had been scheduled for the same day.

 A spiral of devaluation and inflation -- which accelerated in the first 10 days of the
 new year -- has left Ecuadoreans stunned and impoverished. The monthly
 minimum wage has fallen from the equivalent of $150 a year ago to $50 today,
 while the cost of feeding the average family has risen to $200 a month.

 Calls for Mahuad's resignation rose as the sucre, Ecuador's monetary unit,
 slipped beyond 25,000 to the dollar. The sucre traded at 5,000 to the dollar when
 Mahuad took office in August 1998.

 PROBLEMS IN REGIME

 Several decades of problems -- partisan fighting, corruption, overspending based
 on oil wealth -- converged on the government of Mahuad, a Harvard-educated
 economist. Low oil prices and bad weather that damaged Ecuador's main export
 crops worsened the situation.

 Although analysts say Mahuad cannot be blamed for problems like a bloated
 government bureaucracy, a divided Congress and blatant inequality of incomes,
 critics fault him for failing to take action earlier, causing the public to lose
 confidence.

 Faced with banking problems last March, Mahuad froze bank deposits. Panicked
 Ecuadoreans turned to buying dollars to protect their savings. About 14 banks
 have collapsed as the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to
 shore up the sinking system.

 It has been a recipe for economic and political chaos.

 Now Mahuad is essentially proposing to implement the kind of economic
 stabilization plan that has been used all across Latin America. The plan attempts
 to halt inflation by tying all prices to a fixed exchange rate. What differentiates
 Mahuad's proposal from programs adopted in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, is to
 phase out the use of the sucre, except in small change, and make the dollar the
 standard currency.

 CRITICS' VIEWS

 Ecuador's interest rates and the level of government spending will then be forced
 to mirror those in the United States -- which critics point out is a form of
 economic straitjacket.

 Critics charged that the government was improvising and has launched the
 program without adequate preparation. In order for such a plan to work, dollars
 have to flow into the country, either through loans or investment.

 Few details have been announced in a program that will take at least six months
 to become effective.

 Economists said the minimum wage must be increased, and warned that inflation
 could spiral to more than 13 percent in January as producers and merchants raise
 their prices to match the latest devaluation. For any stabilization plan to work,
 authorities must cut spending and renew public confidence in the economy,
 strong challenges in the best of situations.

 But the middle class, executives and small business owners embraced Mahuad's
 plan.

 ``At least we'll know where we are going,'' said Jorge Pena, owner of El Cuero, a
 leather goods store in the upscale shopping mall called El Bosque. ``The dollar is
 more stable.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald