Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez declared a state of emergency in the capital city on Friday and dissolved the Supreme Court in a bid to settle a political crisis simmering for months.

The emergency declaration empowers the government to take extraordinary measures to quell unrest in Quito, where thousands of people took to the streets late in the day, pressing Gutierrez to quit.

In a televised statement, Gutierrez said the current Supreme Court was "dismissed," because it was "generating national commotion ...especially in the city of Quito."

Ecuador's Supreme Court has been dissolved for the second time since last December, when the pro-Gutierrez bloc of 52 lawmakers in the 100-seat unicameral Congress voted to remove the judges.

The Opposition accused Gutierrez, a former army colonel, of dissolving the Supreme Court because it was moving to impeach him on corruption charges in November.

The crisis turned worse early in April, when the new president of the Supreme Court cleared former president Abdala Bucaram of corruption charges and allowed him to return from eight years in exile in Panama.

Opponents also rejected a judicial reform proposal by Gutierrez late in March that an independent body be created to name new judges. They insisted on an immediate disbanding of the new court named by pro-government legislators.

Gutierrez's bid to cater to the demands by the International Monetary Fund was biting too, as those austerity measures meant cutting subsidies for the poor majority, who considered him a populist, anti-corruption reformer and elected him president in November 2002.

Source: Xinhua