Sixto Durán-Ballén

Early life Durán-Ballén was born on 14 July 1921, in Boston, Massachusetts. He was born while his parents, Sixto Durán-Ballén Romero and Maria Eugenia Cordovéz y Cayzedo, were on a diplomatic mission in the United States.

Ballén studied at San Jose La Salle grammar schools in Guayaquil and in Quito. His secondary schooling was with the Jesuits at San Gabriel high school. Durán-Ballén studied architecture at Columbia University, where he graduated first in his class in 1945.

He married Josefina Villalobos in New York in 1945.

In 1979 he ran as the PSC's presidential candidate, but was defeated by the populist Jaime Roldós Aguilera. In 1984, President Leon Febres-Cordero, appointed Durán-Ballén Minister of Housing, position he held until 1988 when the Social Christian Party chose him to run again for president. However "his heart was not in it" as his youngest daughter of his nine children was going through the rigors of bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy because of leukemia. She died in 1989 at the age of 29.

Presidency (1992–1996) 1992 Ecuadorian presidential election

At the end of 1990 he publicly criticized the direction of the PSC in a public statement. In February 1991 he contested the internal elections for the party leadership, in which the Guayaquil faction (led by Febres-Cordero) succeeded in appointing Jaime Nebot as presidential candidate and national director. Durán-Ballén alleged irregularities in the election of party delegates, to no avail (and despite opinion polls reportedly giving him advantage over Nebot).

As a consequence, Durán-Ballén and his supporters left the party to form the more right-wing Republican Union Party. This decision was widely popular as it was seen as breaking with the political establishment, even being compared with Peru's Alberto Fujimori in the media. They subsequently entered into a controversial alliance with the Conservative Party. Eventually, Durán defeated Nebot in the second round of the 1992 presidential election.

Tenure Durán-Ballén was inaugurated president on 10 August 1992. During his presidency, Ballén lowered the Ecuadorian inflation from 67% to 24%. Durán-Ballén also led Ecuador into membership in the WTO, with negotiations being led by his subsecretary of Foreign Affairs, Patricio Izurieta Mora-Bowen. The admission to the WTO had a significant impact on the nation's political institutions and export competitiveness. Many analysts agree that all these actions carried out under his economic plan meant the prelude to almost absolute insolvency to which the country would arrive in 1998 with an external debt of 16.4 billion dollars. In response to the corruption allegations against him, Ballén called for a second popular referendum to allow reforms as per modernization of the state, which were largely rejected. The World Bank insistent on the privatization of public services which resulted in the reduction of jobs, the elimination of alleged subsidies and the profitability of the Ecuadorian state management. The war ended with both nations withdrawing troops on 28 December 1995, a few months before Ballén left office.

On 10 August 1996, Ballén was succeeded by Abdalá Bucaram. Upon leaving office, Ballén was praised by the public opinion, while his economic policies and his involvement in the Cenepa War, caused his presidency to have mixed opinions from scholars.

In 2005, he wrote an autobiography titled A mi manera... Los años de Carondelet and edited by the publisher of the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar. In 2006, he appeared as a candidate for the Andean Parliament for the Christian Democratic Union, but was not elected.

Death

Ballén died in his sleep at his home in Northern Quito on the night of 15 November 2016, from natural causes at the age of 95. He is survived by his wife Josefina and their eight children. His funeral procession later conclude at a religious service at the Cathedral of Quito. The incumbent president, Rafael Correa did not attend the funeral but he declared three days of national mourning. Former president Gustavo Noboa and Ballén's first vice president, Alberto Dahik, were also those in attendance. His remains were later buried in a vault at the Church of Santa Teresita in Quito. The impeachment of his Vice President Alberto Dahik, for allegedly using public funds illicitly, further weakened his stance. However, none of these claims were properly supported and are suspected to have been started by his political adversaries to weaken his legacy. Duran-Ballen's legacy also stands for his work as an independent architect, he promoted several urban development projects in Quito. Among his works are the current headquarters of the Municipality of Quito, the Legislative Palace, and the IESS headquarters in El Ejido, among others.

In December 2021, a statue of him was erected in Quito.