Ecuador decides this Sunday, October 15, who will be the ruler who ends the current presidential period (2021-2025). President Guillermo Lasso will not be able to finish it because, in May, he dissolved the National Assembly (AN, Parliament) and thus put an end to a political trial process that sought his removal. The Andean country enters these early elections with a multiple economic crisis, political instability and an unprecedented escalation of violence and crime.
In May 2021, Ecuador entered a new Government, that of Guillermo Lasso, a conservative politician and former banker, who managed to become President in his third attempt as a candidate.
However, Lasso will not finish his term, scheduled until May 2025. Two and a half years after his inauguration, the country is preparing, once again, for an election day. Now, with a different scenario, marked by violence in the country.
After a first round, on August 20, the center-right candidate Daniel Noboa, of the National Democratic Action alliance (ADN), and the Correismo candidate, Luisa González, of the Citizen Revolution movement, are in the final stretch towards the runoff. which will take place this October 15.
Why didn’t Guillermo Lasso finish his presidential term?
“I have decided to apply article 148 of the Constitution of the Republic, which grants me the power to dissolve the National Assembly due to the serious political crisis and internal commotion,” said the president, in May, at the greatest point of instability of his Government. and the first time that a president used the so-called “cross-death” mechanism in the history of Ecuador.
His decision occurred one day before the National Assembly was convened to vote on an impeachment trial against him for a report promoted by opposition legislators, which linked Lasso to an alleged crime of embezzlement in a contract for Ecuador’s oil fleet. . This report had as its main element the report “The Great Godfather”, from the digital media La Postawhich exposed a network of corruption at the state level and an alleged connection between the president’s brother-in-law and his political mentor, Danilo Carrera, with the Albanian mafia.
It was not the first time that Parliament had tried to remove him. In June 2022, the indigenous movement called for a national strike, which lasted 18 days, due to discontent with Lasso’s economic measures. Revolts occurred that left six dead, several injured and culminated in the installation of dialogue tables, which ultimately did not satisfy the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador. Two days before the demonstrations ended, the National Assembly met and the opposition proposed his dismissal, but it failed due to lack of votes.
The Executive, which has governed alone after breaking with its main ally, the Social Christian Party (PSC), maintained a conflictive relationship with a Parliament made up, mostly, of opposition legislators. A challenge that the Government, which emerges from the vote on October 15, could also face.
The political crisis, exacerbated by social discontent over budget cuts in a fragile economy, led Guillermo Lasso to dissolve the Assembly. The measure did not have a negative impact in Ecuador, it was accepted by society due to fatigue with the Executive – which had less than 15% approval, according to the pollster Perfiles de Opinión – and the Legislative – with less than 10% approval. .
The legacy of a weakened economy
The country “is going through an economic slowdown,” said Verónica Artola, former manager of the Central Bank of Ecuador (BCE) and deputy dean of the Faculty of Economics at the Pontifical Catholic University of the South American nation, in an interview with France24.
For 2023, the ECB projected economic growth of up to 2.8%, but in the second half it updated its projection and reduced it to 1.6%. Furthermore, according to the agency’s projections, the country’s GDP would only grow by 0.8% in 2024. “This does not allow for the creation of jobs or the reduction of poverty,” said Artola.
And only three out of every ten Ecuadorians have a formal job and, by June 2023, poverty increased to 27% and extreme poverty to 10.8%, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC).
Guillermo Lasso’s strongest point was order in the macroeconomy, hence the fiscal deficit in 2022 was reduced to close to $2 billion. “But everything he did was erased in one year,” said the economic analyst, pointing out that the deficit for 2023 could be around $5 billion, 4% of the country’s total GDP.
The reasons, Artola explained, are several: lower oil production, low crude oil prices, the last tax reform, which reduced the income of resources or the impact of leaving oil reserves underground in the Yasuní National Park, in the region. Amazon, located in the east of the country.
This decision was made after a popular consultation held during the first round of the elections in which citizens were asked if they agreed to maintain the crude oil reserves in the subsoil in this area of the country and in which the option of ‘If I win. Added to this are the economic losses due to the El Niño phenomenon, which, according to the Government, would amount to between 4,000 million and 6,000 million dollars.
In this situation, thinking about external debt would not be the most optimal. With a country risk (indicator that measures the probability of non-compliance with the financial obligations of a State) that does not fall below 1,600 points and the increase in rates by the Federal Reserve (US central bank), “ Going into the international market is an almost closed option due to the high interest rates,” said Artola, specifying that the country needs financing between 6,000 million and 7,000 million dollars annually just to close the fiscal gap.
With a government that would only have 15 months, it is unlikely that the International Monetary Fund or other multilateral organizations would make loans to the country.
Furthermore, foreign investment has decreased in recent years. In the midst of the pandemic, in 2020, this item reached around $1.2 billion according to the ECB. But, by 2022, about $800 million will come in.
This is compared to remittances which, on the contrary, have increased and sustain the family economy. Due to the new wave of migration, in 2022, there was an income of nearly 4.3 billion dollars in money sent by Ecuadorians abroad.
According to estimates, 2023 would close as the year that Ecuador has received the most remittances since the economy was dollarized in 2000.
So far this year, more than 101,700 Ecuadorians have been encountered by the United States border patrol. Of them, 3,455 are children who arrived alone.
Violence and crime, the challenge of fighting mafias and corruption
Ecuador has experienced a 528.1% increase in the number of intentional homicides compared to the first half of 2019, according to the Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory (OECO). Projections warn that the country could exceed 7,000 violent deaths, reaching a rate greater than 35 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón, in the coastal province of Guayas, accumulate 35.65% of all homicides that occur in the country, doubling the semiannual rate of Venezuela, the most violent country in South America in 2022.
Combating the violence that besieges Ecuador does not involve an offensive solely against drug trafficking. The fight against corruption and the purging of law enforcement institutions are key to reducing or, at least, stopping this problem.
For Daniel Pontón, an academic at the Institute of Higher National Studies of Ecuador (IAEN), the penetration of crime and a reduced State, with limited resources, are factors that directly influenced the security crisis. “But there was also little intelligence capacity on the part of the Government to understand the seriousness of the problem,” Pontón said in an interview with France24.
The once peaceful Ecuador is now a territory in dispute by local criminal gangs, which have been linked to irregular groups on the border with Colombia and Mexican cartels, which have turned the country into a large drug collection center that is then taken to United States and Europe. Car bombs, attacks, explosions at gas stations and daily shootings near schools became the new Ecuadorian reality.
The recruitment of minors, especially in cities like Guayaquil, Esmeraldas and Quevedo, is worrying. Organized crime groups use them to carry out their operations. Hence, the death of young people between 15 and 19 years old also increased by 500% since 2019, according to the OECS.
The gangs have taken advantage of the historical and systematic state absence and abandonment in coastal towns such as Esmeraldas and Guayaquil. Cities with neighborhoods without basic services, marginalized from any state policy, with high percentages of school dropouts and problems with access to health. “I don’t think we are even at the beginning of resolving security,” said Pontón, who sees security as synonymous with political strength.
“Unfortunately, the last two governments, overwhelmed by the economic, political, social situation and the pandemic, could not solve it,” he added.
According to the 2023 Global Organized Crime Index, Ecuador is the tenth highest crime country in the world. The organization warns of the rapid growth of organized crime and questions that “the government and law enforcement have done little to address this problem.”
Criminal control in prisons
The first challenge of the next Government to be able to quell the violence, according to Pontón, is to confront the crisis of the penitentiary system, which has left more than 14 prison massacres since 2021, with almost 500 prisoners murdered.
“It got out of hand,” lamented the security expert. For him, the evidence of this is what happened with the recent murder of seven detainees for their alleged participation in the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, which occurred in August. Six people involved were provisionally detained in the Penitenciaria del Litoral, in Guayaquil, the most violent prison, and one in a prison in Quito. Even without clues about the assassination, the authorities who run the prisons received orders to transfer them from prison, but it was not carried out.
The crime of the seven prisoners occurred a week before the second round of elections and in the middle of a state of emergency.
Although the Villavicencio crime brought into focus the escalation of violence in the country, candidates for the National Assembly, local governments and other politicians have also been murdered this year.
A report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, from 2022, noted that there is an institutional weakening due to a series of government measures, “encouraged by the cut in public spending and the precariousness of human and material resources” in the penitentiary system.
In the opinion of the IACHR, “the deplorable conditions of detention and the situations of extreme violence to which people deprived of their liberty are exposed constitute in themselves cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”
Institutional weakening is also reflected in prisons, which has allowed criminal gangs to operate from within.
These gangs extort prisoners and their families, who have lamented after each massacre that the State does not guarantee the life and safety of the prisoners.
Now, the presidential candidates wear bulletproof vests and there is a strong operation to protect the voting centers. Uncertainty and disenchantment with politicians surround the elections whose winners will have just 15 months to try to change the complex panorama of the country.
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