Turmoil in South America

While President Bush and Hugo "Boo" Chavez engage in their dueling tours across South America a serious situation is developing in Ecuador as the country's constitutional order is thrown into question.

AP
QUITO, ECUADOR — Police surrounded Ecuador's Congress on Thursday to keep out dozens of lawmakers who were fired a day earlier by four electoral judges whom the lawmakers had sought to impeach in the latest constitutional crisis for the small Andean nation. The fired legislators were also attacked by protesters.
The four judges of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal accused the 57 legislators of interfering with a referendum on whether to rewrite the constitution.

Ecuador's new leftist President Rafael Correa, an admirer of Venezuela's firebrand leader Hugo Chavez, sided with the court and was pressing ahead with the referendum, a step the congressmen have called illegal.

The court ruling was part of a clash over a constitutional assembly sought by Correa, who wants to limit the power of a political class he blames for the country's problems.

The tribunal's action came after the 57 members of the 100-seat unicameral Congress signed a petition to start impeachment proceedings against the four judges who approved the referendum. The tribunal has seven members.