254. In addition, they wished to know why members of the police and the armed forces did not have the right to vote; what legal sanctions, if any, were applicable to persons who were unwilling to perform their duty to vote; whether the stipulation that a party had to be a nationwide organization before it could be registered was fully in conformity with article 25 of the Covenant; why only the President had the power to call a referendum; and whether it was intended to repeal article IS (2) of the Constitution, which provided that the rights of citizenship were suspended during confinement in prison. 255. In his reply, the representative of the State party said that the "electoral quotient" requirement, whereby a party that did not obtain at least 5 per cent of the vote cast in two successive elections at the national level was automatically dissolved, had been abrogated. Deprivation of civil rights included the right to vote and to stand for election, and applied to all persons who had received final prison sentences. There was no contradiction between the Covenant and those provisions of Ecuadorian law that made voting compulsory except for those who were illiterate or aged over 65 as there was no question of depriving any category of persons of the right to vote. There were historical reasons for according optional suffrage to illiterate persons. Illiterate persons came from the indigenous Indian population and liberal elements in the society had opposed giving indigenous peoples voting rights based on the assumption that they were too easily manipulated by the large landowners and the Church. It was therefore considered that making voting optional for illiterate persons would reduce such manipulation. However, since the number of persons who could not read or write was decreasing, the impact of such a measure on the political life of the country was diminishing. Mandatory voting was of great importance in a fragile democracy and was a means of ensuring the legitimacy of the Government. 256. The right to vote had not been granted to members of the police and the armed forces for historical and political reasons. Civilian society had indeed sought, by withholding the right to vote, to restrain the army's political ambitions. In recent years, however, the armed forces had tended increasingly to respect the electoral order and one school of thought was in favour of granting them the right to vote. The stipulation that a party had to be a nationwide organization before it could be registered was also to be understood in its historical context. Ecuador was divided by the Andes, a barrier which had created wide geographical differences and an intense regionalism. In the past, that situation had been exploited by political parties anxious to maintain regional powers ana oligarchy, As a result, political parties now had to be national in scope, and under the Political Parties Act a large proportion of Ecuador's 21 provinces had to provide candidates for election. There were, however, no major restrictions on the formation of parties, and there were currently 17 political parties in Ecuador. Eights of persons belonging to minorities 257. With reference to that issue, members of the Committee wished to receive information on how the ecological deterioration of the area in the Amazon region was affecting the social and cultural organization of the indigenous communities living there and on any measures that had been taken to address that problem. In addition, information was requested on treaties or -59-