Wednesday July 3, 2013

Wednesday July 3, 2013  update #501

Bella was off to the Chamber Of Commerce to sit in on a meeting to obtain citizenship in Ecuador.  We may as well find out what it takes because the next 18 months will probably fly by as quickly as the first 18 months.  

That meeting must have finished early because she then caught a bus to San Joaquin to try to get some answers about the Coopera situation.  Apparently our old Manager was bravely there trying to answer peoples’ questions.  It sounds like it will be well into August before we will be able to access our accounts. 

Then of course Bella had her Bridge Club.

In the meantime I headed out this afternoon after completing most of my chores.  One look at the sky convinced me to grab my backpack with my umbrella, etc.  My first stop was at Hearts Of Gold to drop off some knitted or crocheted scarves for kids to use during this cool season.

As I left there it started to rain and I got to the side of the stadium when the heavens opened and I feared my cheap little umbrella would fold under the pressure.  I ducked under a business canopy with many other folks and waited about 5 minutes until the rain slowed a bit then I continued on.

My destination was the Court House and I made it there before the 2:45 deadline for meeting with other expats and Ecuadorians to provide a show of solidarity with our lawyer Carlos.  Carlos had managed another hearing with the adolescent court to try a second time to get an injunction to halt the liquidation of our Coopera Credit Union.   Carlos and Ben were hoping for up to 350 persons and were very disappointed when only about 50 of us showed up.  In hindsight, we packed the small courtroom anyway and most of us were standing for the 1.5 hours of the legal arguments, all in Spanish of course.  I really thought our lawyer was doing a great presentation because the female judge was making copious handwritten notes.  One of the 3 government personnel on the other side each had their say and the one venomous-looking woman had the crowd hissing at her until the judge threatened to clear the courtroom.  They had rebuttals and when they were complete the judge spoke only a couple of sentences and Carlos stood up and turned to us saying “We lost.  She said No.”

This was all very disappointing.  Of course we all feel it is all political payback and the outcome was never in doubt.

I took the bus to Monay Mall and ran into Garth and Orilla who had just managed to withdraw all their money from Coopera.  They reported that the Coopera branches already have new signs of the other Credit unions that are now administering the liquidation withdrawals.

We are in awe that such events could happen with such rapidity, and with absolutely no process of law.  Right now we are very disappointed in our adopted country.

Bella arrived later at Monay as well and we had a treat supper at KFC.  I guess on Wednesdays they have some music and dance “participaction” kind of event in the food area and it was quite loud.   Watching the kids have fun though was a treat.   I only took a couple of photos of that today so I will just post them here.

That was the day's excitement,   Cheers, Al