This could be one for Ripley’s Believe it or Not. Today I got a hold of a document with a lot of nonsense about an assembly supporting the work of the mining company in Intag, and rejecting the presence of Carlos Zorrilla, for leading the opposition against the mining project. Further down, the fictional assembly agrees to reject the presence of the other 3 “bad” foreigners: Jose Decoux, Denis Laporta and Mary Ellen Fieweger (they also included me here too for good measure). Strangely, the document does not list a single community representative present at the imaginary assembly.
So far nothing unusual, the pro-mining faction have tried this idiotic strategy plenty of times before without success. BUT THIS TIME, one of the persons signing said document has been dead for quite a while! No kidding; as in deceased, departed, stiff, dead, muerto – and buried six feet underground.
My hat’s off to Ascendant and their miraculous power to get stiffs to sign petitions asking for the expulsion of foreigners from Ecuador!! This could be one hell of a lot more profitable than their much troubled billion-dollar copper mine. As far as I know, there are no laws requiring Environmental Impact Statement to get dead people’s signatures, nor to socialize the Terms of Reference!
Another funny thing related to this latest circus show was the fact that people going around getting the signatures, were doing so on Thursday and Friday – for a “community assembly” that was supposed to have taken place on Wednesday!
The document had about 100 empty spaces for people to sign, but only 9 were with signatures. That´s including the dead guy.
We were told that the nice people going around the communities getting the signatures all worked for Daimi Services, who was contracted by Ascendant to convince people of the wonders of mining. Well, now we know there’s at least one dead guy who’s convinced!
