BY TIM JOHNSON
QUITO, Ecuador -- Ex-president Jamil Mahuad blamed Ecuador's military
Saturday for toppling him from office in an ``embarrassing spectacle''
that brought
shame to his homeland.
Mahuad, out of public view for much of the crisis, appeared at
a Quito television
station at midmorning and recounted how senior army officers
had tried to bully
him into leaving the palace a day earlier.
``I was -- quote -- invited -- unquote -- to abandon the palace,''
Mahuad said. ``All
the civilian employees were ordered out. Then I was told by Gen.
Carlos Moncayo
that they could not guarantee the safety of the palace. It is
incredible that they
could not protect the palace from a protest of 2,000 or 3,000
people.''
Mahuad said he then went to a Quito air base, ``where a plane
was put at my
disposal to leave the city or the country.''
Later in the evening, Mahuad said he was told the base had been
surrounded
``and the intention was to stop the president from moving. This
would have meant
that the president was captive or a hostage.''
Without offering details, Mahuad said he slipped through the military
cordon and
went to the Chilean Embassy in Quito, where he remained for a
few hours before
spending the night at a private home.
Mahuad disagreed sharply with accounts that he had relinquished his post.
``A toppled president neither resigns nor abandons his job. He
is toppled,''
Mahuad said bluntly.
Mahuad's ouster brought an end to what seemed a charmed political
career. A
lawyer by training, Mahuad, 50, had served two terms as Quito
mayor, bringing
the Andean capital a trolley mass transit system. Once he assumed
the
presidency, his greatest achievement was an accord to end a dispute
that had led
to three border skirmishes with neighboring Peru.
But in Ecuador's roughhouse national arena, Mahuad found numerous
enemies,
among them Guayaquil Mayor Leon Febres Cordero, a former president.
Reflecting on the crisis, Febres Cordero said Mahuad's biggest
error was leaving
the palace when his authority was challenged.
``When you leave the seat of power, you're finished,'' he said.
``No one knows
you, not even hungry dogs in the street.''
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald