The political trial against the Ecuadorian president, Guillermo Lasso, enters its final stage this Tuesday and with this one of the crucial moments of the Government, given the possibility that the president is censured and dismissed for the alleged crime of embezzlement for a contract the public oil transportation company, Flopec, and Amazon Tanker.
The scenarios are complex for Lasso’s survival, especially after Sunday when the assembly members re-elected Virgilio Saquicela as president and the opposition managed by a large majority of votes to obtain the positions of the entire Legislative Administration Council, including Viviana Veloz. and Esteban Torres, who will be the interpellants of the political trial.
The way in which the vote has been taken reveals a coalition between parties that were at some point allied to the Government, and this “lends itself to interpretations of how the agreements have been made within the Assembly and that there is a favorability of impeachment ”, analyzes Esteban Ron, dean of the Faculty of Social and Legal Sciences at the SEK International University, who also points out that at this point “the political capital of the Government to generate cooperative alliances is minimal”.
The impeachment session is called at 10 in the morning and has three stages. It will begin with the questioning assembly members who will have two hours to present the evidence of the case. Afterwards, the defense of President Lasso will arrive at the legislature around noon accompanied by his ministerial cabinet, he will have three hours to unload the evidence. The third stage of the session will continue with the aftershocks, where each one will have one hour.
Then the president of the Assembly will give way to the debate where the assembly members will have a maximum of ten minutes each to intervene. The decision can be made at the close of the debate, but according to the regulations, lawmakers have up to five days to meet again and vote. 92 votes are required for the impeachment and censure of the president.
The precedent of how long a political trial can last dates back to 1995, when ex-vice president Alberto Dahik was questioned for alleged embezzlement of public funds, the session began at two in the afternoon and lasted until six in the morning the following day, without getting the votes for his removal.
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This is the first time that a president has been subjected to impeachment since the approval of the Ecuadorian Constitution in 2008. Before that, the country’s political instability led to three coups d’état involving seven presidents in a decade. Guillermo Lasso won the presidential elections in April 2021, after trying for the third time to reach the Presidency of Ecuador, and his term ends in 2025.
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