By JUAN FORERO
 
QUITO, Ecuador, April 17 - With his presidency facing its most serious political crisis, President Lucio Gutiérrez said Sunday night that he would not resign, charging that political opponents were trying to remove him because of his struggle to create what he called an independent, corruption-free judiciary.

"There is not any possibility," the president, seated in the presidential palace, told a group of foreign reporters.

But the crisis, caused by simmering anger over the firing in December of the Supreme Court by the president's allies in Congress, appeared to have no end in sight.

A day after Mr. Gutiérrez revoked a state of emergency to quell days of protests, Congress convened in a special session Sunday to discuss a judicial crisis amid repeated calls for the president's resignation. The tumult has left Mr. Gutiérrez, whose austere economic policies and heavy-handed governing style had already antagonized many Ecuadoreans, on shaky political footing.

Facing protests last week over what some international constitutional experts said was Mr. Gutiérrez's illegal takeover of the Supreme Court, the president suspended individual liberties late Friday and dismissed the judges that his allies in Congress had appointed in December. He reversed course on Saturday, annulling the state of emergency while sticking with his decision to dissolve the court, which he said was necessary because the court had been the fuse for protests.

Mr. Gutiérrez said it was not he who was strong-arming the judiciary, but rather the political dinosaurs who would not permit reforms that would take the courts out of the hands of crooked politicians. Mr. Gutiérrez cast himself as an honest servant of the people, improving the economy and battling vested interests.

"Why do they ask for my resignation?" he asked. "Because Lucio Gutiérrez is doing what they could not when they governed."

But the president faced determined opponents, from middle-class homemakers to leftist student groups and indigenous organizations angered by what they view as a corrupt government interested more in consolidating power than in improving their lives.

"The president will not be able to govern," said Paco Moncayo, Quito's mayor, who harshly criticized Friday's emergency decree. "He has been so rejected among Ecuadoreans, he's done things so badly, that he cannot face the people again."

Mr. Gutiérrez's troubles are nothing new in this chronically unstable country, where presidents were removed from office in 1997 and again in 2000, the last time with help from Mr. Gutiérrez, then an army colonel.

Many of the protesters - part of a loose, disorganized force that is leaderless but potent - say they do not want just Mr. Gutiérrez out, but all the politicians and parties. Transparency International, which tracks corruption worldwide, ranks the country and its parties among Latin America's more corrupt.

"I'm tired of all of them," said Inés Cruz, 50, a homemaker who had never before taken part in a street demonstration. "We have to find a better future."

Ecuador has been racked by strife since December, when the president's supporters in Congress fired 27 of the 31 judges on the court, which had earlier backed a failed effort to impeach Mr. Gutiérrez on corruption charges. Legislators then appointed a new court, which critics said was stacked with government allies.

The judges thrown out in December were fired with the support of the Roldosista Party, whose leader, former President Abdalá Bucaram, returned to Ecuador from exile this month after the president of the new Supreme Court, Guillermo Castro, threw out corruption charges against him.

Members of Ecuador's Congress said they would meet to enact new rules covering the appointment of justices and appointing a new commission to choose them. Pro-government lawmakers wanted to ratify the president's measures, while government opponents hoped to muster enough votes to strike down the rulings made by the court since it began operating in December.