President is accused of embezzlement in oil company management; in June 2022, he was 8 votes away from losing office
The Ecuadorian Assembly approved on Tuesday (9.May.2023) the 2nd attempt to depose its president, Guillermo Lasso, after Congress rejected the measure in June 2022. This time, the result needed to open the impeachment process was achieved with 88 favorable votes from its 137 members.
The current chief executive is accused of committing embezzlement in the management of the state-owned company flopec (Ecuadorian Oil Fleet) in contracts signed between 2018 and 2020. The process must be voted within 10 days, with a date to be defined.
The adopted resolution states that “the National Assembly accuses the President of the Republic because, together with Hernán Luque Lecaro [ex-presidente do grupo coordenador de empresas públicas]defined the continuation of oil transport contracts in favor of third parties, aware that they represented a loss for the State”.
In the session, which lasted more than 5 hours and had a quorum of 116 congressmen, 88 voted in favor of the trial, 23 voted against and 5 abstained. At the end of the voting, there was applause and shouts of “out, Lasso”.
Now, to depose the Ecuadorian president, the approval of 2/3 of the favorable votes of the Assembly is necessary, the equivalent of 92 votes. However, according to the Ecuadorian newspaper La Horathe Lasso opposition is still not confident of victory and believes that the dispute for votes will intensify.
The leader of the deposition proposal is the left-wing Citizen Revolution movement, led by former president Rafael Correa, who was vice president on the ticket that ran with Lasso in the last Ecuadorian elections, in 2021. He is in exile in Belgium, where he received asylum after being sentenced to 8 years in prison for corruption.
WHO IS GUILLERMO LASSO
Guillermo Lasso is 67 years old and a former banker and businessman. He belongs to the Ecuadorian right-wing party CREO Movement. He took office as president of Ecuador in May 2021. It was his 3rd attempt to be elected. In the campaign, he used the motto “Entrepreneurship, Innovation and the Future”.
His main political opponent was Rafael Correa, former president of the country, and “Correism”a political movement created around it.
This is the 2nd impeachment attempt in less than 1 year. In June 2022, Lasso was 8 votes away from being tried by the Ecuadorian Congress. At the time, the country was dealing with violent indigenous protests due to the high cost of living and a group of deputies presented a motion of dismissal due to serious social unrest.
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