Ecuador's President Rafael Correa.

QUITO, Ecuador (AP):

A proposed new consti-tution grants Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa broad powers, including the ability to dissolve Congress and set monetary policy, and would let him stay in office through 2017.

The charter, expected to be approved yesterday by the constituent assembly elected to write it, would help wrest power from Ecuador's widely discredited traditional political parties and more equitably distribute wealth, says the United States-trained economist who took office in January 2007.

Excessive power

Correa's detractors say the proposed constitution would concentrate excessive power in his hands and amount to a virtual coronation of the self-avowed Christian socialist leader.

If approved by the assembly as expected, the nation's voters will decide September 28 whether to adopt it. The constitutional rewrite follows the lead of Correa's socialist allies Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales in seeking a charter that would let him extend his years in power.

The proposed constitution would enable Correa to run for two new and consecutive four-year terms. It does not specify when a new Congress would be elected, though a vote is expected early next year. The old Congress was dissolved and replaced provisionally by the constituent assembly.

Financial functions

The charter would transfer to the president functions currently performed by the independent central bank, and some worry that Correa could politicise what has been a watchdog institution tasked with ensuring economic stability.

Though Ecuador's economy is dollar-based, the central bank issues financial data and controls how many United States dollars are injected into the economy.

"We want a president of a democratic republic, not a monarch in power," former President Lucio Gutierrez told The Associated Press.

Final touches

Correa's Alianza Pais party controls more than 60 per cent of the 130-member assembly, and the 444-article proposal was expected to breeze through it yesterday.

The assembly put final touches on the document yesterday, voting to make the Indian languages Quichua and Shuar official languages alongside Spanish.

The document's less radical brand of socialism when compared to those of Morales and Chávez and Correa's popularity should boost its chances of voter approval come the referendum.