QUITO (AFP) - Ecuador's legislature launched a bid to impeach President Lucio Gutierrez for alleged misappropriation of funds.
Gutierrez, 47, who was elected in November 2002, stands accused of having used state funds for the last campaign of his Patriotic Society party.
The impeachment trial request came from the conservative Social Christian, the social-democratic Democratic Left, the indigenous Pachakutik, the leftist Democratic Popular Movement and the Socialist parties, as well as some independents.
In the South American nation's one-chamber legislature, 67 of 100 votes would be needed to impeach Gutierrez.
A formal request for the impeachment trial was presented to speaker Guillermo Landazuri, who said a legislative committee next week would begin evaluating whether there are grounds for the trial.
Gutierrez, a former army colonel, civil engineer and populist campaigner whose term is due to stretch through January 15, 2007, maintains that the charges against him are part of a revenge plot by former president Leon Febres Cordero for the government's seeking money due from his family.
Gutierrez said Thursday that the Febres Cordero family owed 110 million dollars to the state, a debt the president says has not been serviced for more than five years.
"They have money and they do not feel like paying. ... I am going to make them pay, so they are trying to get me impeached," Gutierrez charged.
"This is the fight of honest working people against the corrupt oligarchy," the president underscored.
The president has also faced protests from Ecuador's sizable indigenous population. The National Federation of Indigenous People (CONAIE) in the past called for Gutierrez's resignation and organized demonstrations against him.
Indigenous Ecuadorans largely backed Gutierrez's election in 2002 but broke with him after accusing the president of dropping his leftist platform in favor of "neo-Liberalism."
11/04/2004 - 18:46 GMT - AFP