In Ecuador, disabled vice president is inspiration to others

Posted on Tuesday, 03.15.11
In Ecuador, disabled vice president is inspiration to others

Governing from a wheelchair, Ecuador’s vice president has helped shine a spotlight on the nation’s disabled population.

By JIM WYSS
jwyss@MiamiHerald.com

QUITO, Ecuador -- The ornate lobby of the nation’s vice presidential palace is teeming with people in wheelchairs and on crutches, mothers leading the blind and the developmentally disabled.

Many are here because they believe that the man upstairs is one of their own.

Ever since a thief’s bullet ripped through his spine 13 years ago, Ecuador’s vice president, Lenín Moreno, has been paralyzed from the waist down. When he was elected second-in-command of this Andean nation in 2007, he became one of the highest ranking politicians in Latin American history to have a visible disability.

Sitting in a wheelchair behind a wide wooden desk at his office, Moreno, 58, is quick to downplay his historic role.

There have been congressmen and judges in wheelchairs before, he said. There have been Latin American presidents with speech impediments, and Joaquín Balaguer, the former president of the Dominican Republic, was in his 90s and legally blind when he won a third term.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/15/2117194/in-ecuador-disabled-vice-president.htmlo

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Being the director of the national center for the handicapped people, he also worked for the emancipation of women,especially the handicapped women. According to him, Women and girls with disabilities are more vulnerable to physical and mental injury, abuse, abandonment, exploitation , negligence and bad treatment. They are abused both inside and outside home. The Vice-president seems to relate to the plight of the disabled, particularly because of his own confinement to the wheelchair after a mishap. He was hit at his back by a gun shot during a robbery attempt in 1998.

Needless to say, he attends several conferences and meetings and discusses the ways of emancipating this small section of society. He has signed many treaties related which generally deal with the sense of responsibility that we should have towards this section of society. According to Lenin Moreno Garces, being the responsible citizens of Ecuador, it is the duty of the Ecuadorians to care for and pay attention to the heeds of a fellow citizen.

He is still engaged with this holy mission in Ecuador, which has made him one of the most important and well-intended politicians in the world.

More:
http://www.mapsofworld.com/ecuador/information-ecuador/ecuador-government/vice-president.html

http://www.conadis.gob.ec.nyud.net:8090/images/presidente.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_p0Ky0eMmXNo/SuOBr-arX5I/AAAAAAAAjWg/X_dNXaU77_Q/s400/fidel+lenin+moreno.jpg

Lenín Moreno Garcés, vice president of Ecuador, gives the former Cuban
president a medal for social aid Cuba provides to the South American nation.

http://www.tribunalatina.com.nyud.net:8090/es/img2/correa_con_lenin_moreno.jpg