Ecuador constituted itself a free democracy after a long period of indecision. Guayaquil aspired to be an independent state; it listened to the melodious aspirations of its poet, Olmedo, and at other times sought to unite itself to Peru. Bolivar and La Mar both sought to claim this city, which a proud provincialism called "the pearl of the Guayas." The vast ambitions of Bolivar won the day, and Ecuador became a province of Greater Colombia, under the hegemony of Venezuela or New Granada. General Juan José Flores, a Venezuelan, and a friend and lieutenant of the Liberator's, founded the Ecuadorian Republic in 1830. He was the "Father of the Country," and teacher and guardian of this precocious nation, as was Paez in Venezuela and Sucre in Bolivia. He governed the country for fifteen years, being elected President in 1831, in 1839, and in 1843. The unity of Colombia, maintained by the autocracy of Bolivar, was an obstacle in the way of Flores' ambitions for Ecuador; he therefore sought to destroy the federal organisation. Sucre, too, whose young and glorious shoulders were soon to sustain the authority of a liberator, was opposed to the ambitions of the Venezuelan _caudillo_. {214} The latter convoked a Constituent Assembly at Riobamba. The first national statute of the equatorial republic was then promulgated: it established a representative government with two Chambers, an executive independent of these Chambers, and Catholicism as the sole State religion: these were the bases of the Constitution. Ecuador once independent, an era of incessant disturbances set in; men fought for their leaders and for ideas. Flores symbolised the principles of the conservatives, inimical to radicalism and democracy; he dreamed of a strong executive, a national religion, and a limited suffrage. His ideal was a presidency of eight years, and a senate of twelve, an echo of the Bolivian Constitution. He accepted monarchy as the necessary solution of Ecuadorian anarchy; he fell because he attempted the restoration of a superannuated system.