In a statement released on Thursday, the Ecuadorean government denied that president Rafael Correa said that Juan Manuel Santos as Colombia’s president would constitute a problem for relations between the neighboring countries.
In the statement, government press secretary Fernando Alvarado said that statements made by the Ecuadorean president had been “distorted” by Spanish news agency EFE during the European Union-Latin America and the Caribbean Summit, which took place this week in Madrid.
According to the agency, Correa said that “it will be a problem” if Partido de la U’s Juan Manuel Santos won the upcoming Colombian presidential election on May 30.
However, the press release explained the president’s answer by saying that “in the interview, the journalist from the EFE news agency asked about the difficulty that would be raised with the existence of the arrest warrant issued by an Ecuadorean judge against Santos, if he were to be chosen president of Colombia.”
The press release affirmed Ecuador’s commitment to respect and not to interfere with the elections of other countries, “like the one currently happening in our sister country, Colombia.”