Corruption has contaminated almost all areas of the daily life of Ecuadorians, who even pay bribes for information about their sick relatives in public hospitals. So that the body of your loved one leaves the morgue quickly and not at dawn, you must anoint the man who is at the door. In the case of a maternity unit in Guayaquil, it was discovered that a group of security guards, hired to guard the facilities, were charging for photographing newborns, since the hospital did not allow visitors. People must bribe for almost every procedure they must do with public administrations. To get a medical appointment or exam, to get a passport delivered in hours and not weeks. For the turn of a driver’s license or for a judicial official to advance a case. People are so used to it that they consider it natural, part of the price of life.
Traffic cops remove fines for a couple of dollars. “You have to corrupt them, but with respect. Look, take the line, they tell you,” says Wilson, a driver accustomed to opening his wallet to be forgiven for his mistakes behind the wheel. Even if you don’t do anything you have to pay: they check your documents in order and they still touch your pocket. On a 250-kilometer trip from Guayaquil to Santo Domingo, he encountered nine traffic control operations. In most cases he resorted to bribes and paid a total of 15 dollars. Traffic police begin to write violations for the state of the tires, for the windshield feathers that do not dry enough, for a headlight that does not seem to shine much. That exhaust pipe? It makes too much noise, emits too much smoke. Fear your infringement, gentleman, madam. But, alas. Then the hand writes slowly until it hears the magic words: How do we fix this?
The oil sector is lagging behind. 46% of those consulted in the latest analysis of the Americas Barometer consider that it is the most corrupt area in the country. Thirdly, the health system, then the electricity sector, followed by social aid, education, the environment and water. In this scenario, 68% of Ecuadorians say they do not tolerate the most common forms of corruption, such as bribery or bribery. Although compared to Latin American countries, Ecuador registers greater permissiveness regarding the payment of bribes: a third of Ecuadorians justify paying them.
The perception of corruption in the country is increasingly negative, according to Transparency International. The country ranks 20th among 30 Latin American countries. The study evaluates what people perceive about the different manifestations of corruption such as bribery, diversion of funds, meritocracy, nepotism, how much whistleblowers are protected, access to information, excessive bureaucratic burden, impunity of officials public and the poor capacity of the State to contain corruption. For example, since mid-2023, the Prosecutor’s Office has led operations for crimes against the public administration in the justice system and the Executive. The cases have been baptized with symbolic names: MetastasisPurge, Plague, Encounter, Judicial Independence, Abuse of Guarantees. In addition, there are nearly 50 officials prosecuted for different corruption crimes. The Public Ministry mediates the cases in an attempt to demonstrate that there is a fight against this plague, but it does not act the same in all cases. Like that of the president’s wife, Lavina Valbonesi, in which several government officials intervened so that she obtained permits to build a luxury resort in an area where there is a protected forest. The Prosecutor’s Office has remained silent, neither an investigation nor an inquiry. Nor has anything been done to prevent similar cases from recurring.
The panorama is worrying, the Americas Barometer document points out, because it is also evident that the country suffers from very low levels of trust – both interpersonally and in institutions. “They are below the Latin American regional average in all the indicators examined, with some truly alarming figures, such as confidence in political parties.” Politicians are the worst evaluated, only 6% believe that less than half are corrupt. While a third of Ecuadorians think that the assembly members are very corrupt. “These are symptoms of a country with a broken social fabric and a weakened political system, which does not enjoy citizen legitimacy,” the study reveals.
In an attempt to express shame – or just one more political act – this week the State Comptroller General’s Office (CGE) covered with a sign with the phrases “persona non grata for the CGE. National shame”, the portraits of former comptrollers Carlos Pólit and Pablo Celi, which rest in a hallway of honor in the building of the State’s public control body. “They are people who have done a lot of damage to the country,” said the current comptroller, Mauricio Torres. For 10 years, throughout the entire period of Rafael Correa’s government, Pólit was comptroller, and not just anyone. He was decorated by the Government assembly members and applauded by the then president. The former comptroller was found guilty of six counts of money laundering by a jury in the United States Federal Court, based in Miami, at the end of April. In the trial it was shown that Pólit received 10 million dollars from the construction company Odebrecht. After leaving office in 2017, he was replaced by Pablo Celi, sentenced to 13 years in prison for organized crime. According to the Prosecutor’s thesis, Celi was part of a criminal structure to commit corruption and money laundering crimes.
Even in police investigations they blatantly extort you. They made it clear to Esteban that it was better not to report the vehicle that had been stolen the night before New Year’s 2020. “If you report it, the criminals can retaliate,” the police officer who heard about his case told him. The criminals called him, asking him for $3,000 to return it. This is how that organization operates, the police officer who was aware of everything explained to him. Esteban did not pay for not contributing to this rotten system, he lost the vehicle and he did not report it as the uniformed officer suggested. The same path is taken by 95% of Ecuadorians who have declared that they do not report corruption or follow up on their cases out of fear. Fear prevails.
With the threat of the advance of organized crime, corruption has been relegated from the concerns of Ecuadorians, who want security, the economy and unemployment to be resolved first. The State also does not demonstrate in concrete actions its will to defeat this monster with which Ecuadorians live and devours the democracy that is given so little value, so much so that a majority in Ecuador would agree with a military dictatorship in order to end corruption.
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