Ecuadorian Politics and Elections | end of the indigenous protests (for now)

[Sir John Johns]

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

While having been elected on the promise to break with Rafael Correa’s practices of attacking the medias and spreading conspiracy theories against his political opponents, Guillermo Lasso, now embroiled in the Pandora Papers scandal, is reacting by doing exactly the same.

Few days ago, he sent a letter to El Universo (a newspaper already routinely criticized by Correa), a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) behind the Pandora Papers revelations which published in Ecuador the information about Lasso’s ownership of offshore companies without overtly accusing him of tax avoidance or illegality, a card in which he strongly criticized the century-old newspaper, accusing it of ‘not only to avoid its basic duties, but also the ethical standards that it itself touts in its pages’.

The problem according to Lasso is that El Universo ‘is candidly omitting [his] fiscal past and is contributing to make believe in Ecuador the idea that the president of the Republic is a tax evader’ by not indicating the full amount of taxes he had paid since 2005, an information ‘easily accessible to the public, even more for journalists with the level of competences and training that [those of El Universo] surely have’. A table detailing the taxes paid yearly by Lasso either as an individual either through the companies and trusts he owned was joint to the letter with the total taxes paid by Lasso between 2005 and 2020 amounting to $588 million.

He repeated such criticisms during an interview with journalist Carlos Vera (who had served as a tourism minister under President Durán-Ballén in the 1990s) on the state-owned TC Televisión channel and is considered as very complacent with Lasso after having been very complacent with Moreno) denouncing El Universo journalist Mónica Almeida for not having published the Ecuador’s IRS data about his taxes and for an article headline that allegedly was ‘an attack against his name, office and the institutional stability of Ecuador’. Lasso also added this episode could led to a rectification of the Freedom of Expression Law he had sent to the National Assembly to relax press legislation to not enable journalists to defame under the pretext of freedom of expression.

Elaborating on the Pandora Papers investigation, he talked about an ‘international conspiracy’ against him and political leaders like him, answering in the affirmative when asked by Vera about whether a worldwide press investigation carried out by 600 journalists could be a conspiracy. Such statements were condemned by press freedom watchdog Fundamedios which had previously got into trouble with the Correa government (which even attempted to dissolve it).

In that same interview, Lasso also claimed there is a ‘triumvirate of the conspiracy’ made up by Rafael Correa, Jaime Nebot and Leonidas Iza which is allegedly plotting to orchestrate a coup against democratic institutions. ‘The conspiracy started with Correa, followed with Nebot and is continuing with Iza. This trilogy is agreeing on a purpose: hitting democracy’ said the president without giving much details about the so-called conspiracy.

He also mentioned the amount of taxes paid by his political opponents these last fifteen years: $50,000 for Andrés Araúz, $4,200 for Yaku Pérez and $1,000 for Leonidas Iza. The mention of Iza’s tax is a not very subtle reference to the allegations of lying on his income made against the president of the CONAIE by right-wing activists on social networks and a dumb attack made by Lasso two months ago against the indigenous leader when referring to people owning a tractor not being poor (Iza had previously mentioned his tractor to illustrate the impact of increase in fuel prices for farmers).

As underlined by Primicias, resorting to inane conspiracy theories to defend his administration has been a quite common (even if not every effective) strategy used by most Ecuadorian presidents since the return of democracy.

In any case, the three mentioned men have all dismissed the allegations of Lasso accusing him to trying to divert the public opinion from the Pandora Papers scandal and the economic situation.

¿Muerte cruzada?

President Lasso has also announced his mega-law will be split into three separate bills (one for tax reform, one for labor reform and one for investments promotion) with the two former being put to vote under emergency (justified by the recent state of emergency declared in the jail system) leaving only thirty days and a limited debate for assemblymen to discuss the text.

He has already discarded obtaining the support of the UNES (for obvious reasons) and of the PSC (which doesn’t want to hear about tax increases or creation of new taxes) leaving only the ID, Pachakutik and the bunch of independent assemblymen as possible supports for the two bills.

In a sign of 'good will', a controversial disposition in the labor law which would have enable under certain conditions fired employees to pay a compensation to their former employer has been withdrawn, Lasso acknowledging it was ‘a mistake’.

Still, Pachakutik legislators (and even the ID legislators who aren’t fans of the proposed labor legislation) would have a hard time selling the two bills to their voters whose approval would basically equates to electoral suicide. A recent discourse made by Lasso from Carondelet Palace balcony at the same time the CONAIE was paying tribute to the October 2019 protests victims would however made nothing to appease the relations with the indigenous movement: the president then warned the CONAIE about any future outburst of violence and promised he would defend Quito and not going to allow ‘new excesses, violence, aggression and attacks’. He made also a weird comparison with Batman, saying that the CONAIE radicals admire the Joker but that ‘the bad guys only win in the movies’ (uh?).

Add to that the continuation of the aggressive agenda to develop extractive activities started under Correa with the Lasso government aiming at doubling the oil production in the country, an agenda indigenous and environmentalists are strongly opposing.


A cartoon of Vilma Vargas (source) depicting the ongoing political blockage, showing Lasso and the ‘triumvirate of the conspiracy’ while also referring to the very recent collapse of a bridge in Manabí province with, fortunately, no fatalities

To pressure recalcitrant legislators, Lasso has also explicitly mentioned he will use the muerte cruzada in case of legislative blockage or if his bills were rejected by the National Assembly (also threatening to use his presidential veto he claimed the opposition haven’t the required votes - 91 - to overturn it in case the bills were too much distorted by amendments), describing such unprecedented move as 'a constitutional but drastic exit, which is probably unavoidable'.

In case of muerte cruzada, a procedure introduced with the 2008 Constitution but never used so far the president can only use once during the three first years of his term in office, the National Assembly is dissolved and new presidential and legislative elections are held for elect or reelect officials to complete the remaining terms in office. In the meantime and until the convening of the new assembly, the president can rule by economic emergency decree-laws which only need the approval of the Constitutional Court to be passed but could be later approved or reversed by the new legislature. The National Assembly can also used the muerte cruzada if the impeachment of the president is approved by 91 assemblymen; then new elections are held to complete the rest of the legislative and presidential terms in office.

In that scenario, Lasso has some advantages, being the only possible candidate for CREO when neither the UNES, the PSC nor Pachakutik have so far a clear candidate (Arauz is now in Mexico and out of the limelight; Pérez has left Pachakutik while Iza is only at the head of the CONAIE since five months and may be perceived as too much radical; the PSC has no leader since Nebot is retiring from political life), having the state administration and medias behind him and having obtained excellent results in his vaccination program. Nevertheless, this would be a very risky gamble.

[Sir John Johns]

State of emergency and military in the streets

President Guillermo Lasso proclaimed on 18 October a 60-day nationwide state of emergency with immediate effect, alleging of the existence of a situation of 'serious internal turmoil' in relation with rising gang criminality and increase in drug trafficking. It came few hours after the killing of an 11-year-old boy in a south Guayaquil restaurant during a crossfire between a policeman and two criminals who were racketing the clients.

Lasso has announced the full mobilization of the national police to fight increasing crime (blamed on drug trafficking and use) and the deployment of the army in all coastal provinces (Esmeraldas, Manabí, Santo Domingo, Santa Elena, Guayas, Los Ríos, El Oro) which have became a major cocaine trafficking route in recent years, in the Amazon province of Sucumbíos bordering Colombia (used as a rear base for Colombian criminal groups) and in Pichincha, Quito's province, which has experienced a sharp increase of criminality in recent months, even if far from matching the one in Guayaquil.

Lasso also announced the creation of a public legal defense unit to protect in courts policemen and military 'sued for having simply fulfill their duty' and stated that the law should intimidate criminals and not policemen (as if police brutality was seriously prosecuted in Ecuador...). He mentioned also a possible pardoning of those 'unjustly convicted for having done their duty' (this is apparently because the family of the boy killed in Guayaquil is considering suing the police but could be also a reference on possible judicial proceedings for the police response to the October 2019 protests). Defense Minister Fernando Donoso had resigned just before the declaration and is replaced by Gen. Luis Hernández, a veteran of the 1995 Cenepa War against Peru, a former 2008 constituent assemblyman for León Roldós's Ethics and Democracy Network (RED) and a former member of the Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control (CPCCS) under Moreno.

The decision has been criticized by crime experts who have pointed out that militarization of the fight against drug trafficking failed to solve the problem in Felipe Calderón's Mexico (quite the contrary) and by the UNES and the Pachakutik benches which argued that the state of emergency has been actually proclaimed to obstruct and restrict social protests. And people on the left are remembering that in last May, the Ecuadorian anti-riot police unit published a video in support of Colombia's ESMAD then widely criticized for its crackdown on protesters.

All of this in a context of growing social discontent with three groups currently protesting Lasso's policies in the streets: the small and middle-farmers of the Costa (especially rice-growers) who are demanding better selling prices, fight against Colombian and Peruvian agricultural products smuggling and measures against foreign competition; the three main indigenous organizations (the CONAIE, the evangelical and pro-Correa FEINE and the FENOCIN divided, as always, between an anti- and a pro-government wings) which are protesting against increases in fuel prices and the government's extractive policies; the unions which are staunchly opposed to the labor reforms. In a press conference held on 18 October, a day of protests has been announced for next Tuesday by the CONAIE, the FEINE, the FENOCIN, the Unitary Front of Workers (FUT) union federation and the Popular Front, an umbrella organization of unions and left-wing activist groups.

The National Assembly can still revoked the state of emergency with a simple absolute majority vote while the Constitutional Court has still to rule over its legality. The state of emergency is also giving Lasso the possibility to sent to the National Assembly two bills under economic urgency (one for taxation reform, one for labor deregulation) but the invocation of 'serious internal turmoil' by the president also open the way for a muerte cruzada initiated by the parliament as, under the constitution, it is one of the motives enabling the impeachment of the president, his replacement by the vice president and the summoning of fresh presidential and legislative elections assuming a two-third majority (92 votes) could be constituted in the National Assembly in favor of the muerta cruzada.


The standoff between Lasso and the opposition continues

Anticipating the 26 October protest day, CREO and organizations supportive of the government has organized yesterday a gathering in front of Carondelet Palace to support the president (a classic of Ecuadorian politics) during which Lasso addressed the crowd from the balcony of the presidential building, promised that 26 October protesters would be 'unable to set fire to buildings or sequester anyone' (referring to the October 2019 protests when the Comptroller General's office was burnt down and journalists and policemen held against their will for few hours by protesters), denounced alleged coup-plotters (golpistas, again a classic of Ecuadorian politics) and pledged to defend the capital and democracy against the 'triumvirs of the conspiracy'.

That same day, Lasso refused to go to the National Assembly answering questions of the Commission for Constitutional Guarantees which has summoned him, arguing neither the commission nor the Assembly are competent to investigate the Pandora Papers case; according to Lasso, this should be the Comptroller General's office, which should be entrusted with the matter. Also summoned before the commission were Lasso's wife and son who both declined to appear before the assemblymen.

Meanwhile, the oversight commission of the Assembly, headed by Fernando Villavicencio, has give a green light for investigating possible corruption cases in connection with Alex Saab, a Colombian business and front man of Nicolás Maduro recently extradited to the United States.


Division in the ID - Pachakutik alliance

The government's efforts to bring together a majority in the National Assembly are becoming complicate after the removal, unanimously voted by the 131 attending legislators, of Bella Jiménez (ex-ID) from her parliamentary seat and her office of second vice president of the National Assembly. Jiménez is notably accused of having asked $2,500 to a woman for hiring her as an adviser and use the money to pay cosmetic surgery.

The ID is now proposing the name of one of its legislators, Yeseña Guamaní, for the now vacant office of second vice president of the Assembly. This choice is supported by the CREO-led BAN caucus. However the ID ally in the National Assembly, Pachakutik, is now reluctant to vote in favor of the candidate of the self-described social democratic party, putting at risk the alliance between the two and rising the possibility that the second vice-presidency go to a potential UNES candidate, which may receive the support of the PSC (apparently interested into gaining the presidency or the vice presidency of a commission in the parliamentary game of musical chairs but there are also questions of regional balance as Guamaní is an assemblywoman from Pichincha and, if elected, there will be no representative from the Costa - which mostly voted for the UNES and the PSC in legislative elections - left in the praesidium of the National Assembly) as well as part of Pachakutik caucus. This could change the internal balance in the CAL, the parliamentary organ in charge of deciding which bills could be put to vote.

A first meeting, which lasted five hours, between Interior Minister Alexandra Vela and Pachakutik caucus to prepare the ground for the approval of the government's sponsored taxation and labor bills, ended today without much results beside the announcement of the creation of working groups on health, education, agriculture and energy matters and a renewed demand from the indigenous group for a freezing of fuels prices, a non-negotiable measure according to Leonidas Iza.

[Sir John Johns]

A high-profile murder in Guayaquil

In a shocking event, athlete Álex Quiñonez was shot to death at 32 in an ambush on last 22 October in the Colinas de la Florida sector (northern Guayaquil); dubbed as the fastest man in Ecuador, the sprinter has notably participated in the 2012 London Olympic Games. Also murdered while with Quiñonez was urban music singer Christopher 'Jojairo' Arcalla Ramírez, widely believed to be the true target of the hitmen. Previously investigated for illegal possession of arms and intimidation, Arcalla Ramírez had mentioned in a video posted on social networks being a member of Los Tiguerones, a gang involved in cocaine trafficking and a key player in the recent prison massacres motivated by settling of accounts among rival criminal organizations born out from the splintering of the Los Choneros gang.

The freezing of fuel prices (but no before a last increase)

That same 22 October, in a surprising move aiming at defusing social and political situation, President Lasso announced the freezing of fuel prices and the discontinuation of the price fluctuation system introduced in July 2020 by the Moreno government to alleviate the financial cost of the pretty expansive fuel subsidies and has enabled so far the Ecuadorian state to save $800 million. The new, frozen, prices for premium gasoline have been fixed to $2.55 per gallon for premium gasoline and $1.90 per gallon for diesel, a last increase of respectively $0.05 and $0.21 compared to the prices in effect just before the freezing was announced.

The issue of the fuel subsidies - which are costing a lot of money for the central government, are benefiting people who don't need them (wealthy and owners of high-end vehicles) and are feeding smuggling into Peru and Colombia while at the same time being indispensable for road hauliers, farmers and poorest households for traveling, heating and cooking - remains however pending despite years of political debate and failed measures (like the ill-fated Correa-sponsored induction stoves program) to address the problem. Lasso also announced he had asked competent authorities to strictly enforce the sale of rice, milk, fruits and basic foodstuffs at the official price.

The decision to not abolish fuel subsidies and to implement price controls wasn't well received in some conservative circles which are denouncing an abandonment of the neoliberal agenda under which Lasso was purportedly elected. It also make apparent the divisions inside the indigenous movement and the tensions between the CONAIE and its political arm, Pachakutik. In a first time, the indigenous party issued a statement welcoming the presidential announcement and crediting it on the dialogue round-tables established between indigenous and the government. However, three hours later another, more critical, statement was made public in which Pachakutik denounced this time the last-minute increase in fuel prices and repeated its opposition to the agenda of the Lasso administration in regard of labor legislation, taxation reform, privatization and extractivism.

Later that day, the council of the CONAIE chaired by Leonidas Iza reaffirmed its call for a national protest day on 26 October, declared the indigenous organization in a state of 'resistance', claimed the government had 'flouted the dialogue round-tables', denounced an alleged paquetazo (austerity package) and disowned the meeting hold on 20 October between Lasso and several Pachakutik legislators as well as the national coordinator of the party, Marlon Santi (who also was attending the CONAIE council and accused the medias of falsely presenting the CONAIE and Pachakutik as divided); the head of the CONAICE coastal branch was absent from the council. Lasso's decision was also rejected by the FUT union which confirmed its support and participation to the 26 October protest day.

Campesinos distancing themselves from indigenous

Nevertheless, on 25 October, after successful negotiations with the Agriculture minister, the National Campesino Movement (FECAOL, referring to the movement's previous name, the Federation of Agricultural Centers and Peasant Organizations of the Littoral), mostly based in coastal provinces, renounced to join the planned protests after it has obtained concessions (establishment of peasant markets to promote direct selling to consumers; creation of FECAOL brigades to assist the government in the enforcement of official prices; handing over of the management of the National Storage Unit silos to the FECAOL) from the government. Its leader, Richard Intriago, who has been very active in the rice producers protests since last July, distanced himself from Iza's demands, methods and agenda and said the strike (paro) is 'politicized' (Intriago is currently himself registering his own political movement, the People's Party, even if it's unclear for what it is standing for). Pro-Lasso website 4pelagatos had previously accused Intriago of politicizing the rice-grower movement while hinting, not particularly convincingly though, he may have been a supporter of Arauz.

The 26-27 October paro

The first day of protests ended in Quito with clashes between police and demonstrators while nationwide 37 demonstrators have been arrested. The violence in Quito was blamed by Interior Minister on a mysterious 'guevarist' group which is supposedly organizing itself as a guerrilla movement (named 'Guevarist Homeland') even if experts on the matter appear to be skeptical about the existence of such paramilitary group. Two soldiers being briefly sequestrated by an indigenous community in Imbabura (northern Sierra) while eight assaults against journalists have been recorded with the most violent ones being blamed by Fundamedios press watchdog on police forces (a journalist was hit by a rubber bullet in Quito while in Salitre, Guayas, two journalists were brutally attacked by the police; in both cases, the victims had previously identified themselves as journalists). Several roads were also blockaded by protesters, mainly in northern and southern Sierra. The CONAIE called for a second day of protest on 27 October but, clearly, the movement wasn't as important as expected and was already faltering.

Sadly, a 67-year-old journalist died in Cotopaxi province (central highlands) after having felt from a moving vehicle while covering protests; he was working for an indigenous community media linked to the Indigenous and Peasant Movement of Cotopaxi (MICC) of which Leonidas Iza used to be the president.

A victory for Lasso?

The CONAIE has just announced the suspension of the paro until 7 November, arguing of the upcoming holidays (enabling people to visit their relatives elsewhere in the country) and the absence of Lasso from the country from 28 October to 7 November to attend the United Nations summit on climate change in Glasgow and make an official visit in Spain. The fact that the president is feeling able to leave the country for eleven days is pretty telling he doesn't consider himself so far threatened by the social protests.

Meanwhile, the economic situation in rural Ecuador remains unenviable as illustrated by a recent inquiry of the National Institute for Statistics and Censuses (INEC) which indicates that during the third quarter of 2021 71% of workers in the countryside were employed in informal sector (against 39% in urban areas) and received a median monthly salary worth $139 when nationwide median monthly salary is $210 and the value of basic salary (theoretical legal minimum wage) fixed at $400.


Tangentially related to this, I finally came across some official data probably explaining a few electoral patterns, especially among indigenous, and confirming some of my suspicions.

From a report (pdf) on poverty reduction between 2006 and 2014 commissioned by the INEC:

Poverty by ethnic groups:


The report shows that poverty reduced during that period by only 6.1 percentage points among indigenous against 19.3 percentage points for Afro-Ecuadorians, 13.6 percentage points for Mestizos and 13.8 percentage points for Whites (12.5 percentage points for the whole population); the Montubios being not distinguished from Mestizos in 2006, there is no data for that ethno-cultural group for 2006. Indigenous remained during the 2006-2014 period, by far, the poorest ethnic group, with a reduction in poverty far less important than for other ethnic groups.

Breakdown by areas:


The report shows that poverty reduction was much more pronounced in the Costa (-15.6 percentage points) than in Sierra (-9.2 percentage points) and Amazon (-12.1 percentage points). While both rural Sierra (-12.9 percentage points) and rural Costa (-17.1 percentage points) experienced strong decline in poverty, it was strongest in the Costa enabling the area to overtake rural Sierra in term of percent of population not living in poverty.

Provincial breakdown is showing that central Sierra beside Bolívar (-17.3 percentage points), the poorest province in 2006, experienced weaker decline in poverty than most other costal and highland provinces (no breakdown from Amazonian provinces) with poverty declining by 9.4 percentage points in Cañar and Tungurahua, 5.8 percentage points in Azuay, 2.9 percentage points in Cotopaxi and a tepid 0.6 percentage points in Chimborazo, a province with an important impoverished indigenous population. Meanwhile, poverty declined from 53.2% in 2006 to 31.3% in Manabí (which went from a stronghold of Álvaro Noboa's PRIAN to a stronghold of Correísmo during that period); poverty also declined by similar margin in Carchi which however has became one of the province where support for Correísmo has largely collapsed in recent years.

From an Ecuadorian Central Bank December 2019 report (pdf):



While the graphic confirms the important decrease in poverty incidence which happened under Correa (from 35.1% in December 2008 to 22.9% in December 2016 for poverty; 15.7% to 7.9% for extreme poverty), it also shows the last term in office of Correa (2013-17) was marked by a noticeable slowdown and even a stagnation in the decrease of poverty incidence, which corresponds to the period when the oil windfall revenues dried up and the commodities boom came to an end. Situation began to deteriorate in the two first years of the Moreno administration and no doubt things got worse in the two remaining years.



Breakdown by ethnic groups confirms what appears in the INEC report with poverty incidence among indigenous decreasing at a less pronounced rate than for other ethnic groups (no data for Afro-Ecuadorians in this one) and, most importantly, poverty incidence among indigenous began climbing again in the last term in office of Correa while it continued to decrease at a rapid pace for Montubios and stagnated for Mestizos.



Breakdown by regions reveals that reduction in poverty was less important in the Amazon and that, despite important variations, at the end of the Correa presidency, the Costa and the Sierra enjoyed equivalent poverty incidence while the Costa was a poverty incidence rate 3.7 percentage points higher than the Sierra. But under Moreno, Costa overtook Sierra in term of poverty incidence (25.3% against 22.3%)



The Gini index shows a decline in inequality under Correa (with important yearly variations) on national level with inequalities apparently increasing under Moreno. However, the urban/rural breakdown suggests that the decline in inequalities was more important in urban areas than in rural areas where the situation seems to have barely changed.



The graph is showing poverty variation in relation with variations in central government expenditures with a not very surprising correlation between increase in expenditures and decrease in poverty. What is interesting is that while expenditures increased at a strong pace between 2010 and 2013, they experienced their most important decreases in the period between March 2014 and June 2016 before increasing again for the June 2016-June 2017 period (in anticipation of a difficult presidential election but also because of reconstruction in Manabí after the earthquake) enabling a last decline in poverty incidence. Under Moreno, poverty incidence increased again at a rapid pace starting from June 2018.

[omar04]

How are Montubios distinct from Mestizos?

[Sir John Johns]

The Montubios are a not clearly defined ethno-cultural and social group which has emerged since the early 20th century if not the late 19th century and got official recognition at the turn of the 21st century (being officially counted only since the latest census, conducted in 2010; indigenous are officially counted since the 2001 census after having been counted in colonial times and in the first decades after the independence). They are mostly to be found in the coastal provinces of Guayas, Los Ríos and Manabí and are the products of the specific history of Ecuador's western lowlands as well as the epitome of coastal particularism.

They are supposedly descending from the indigenous populations living in present-day Costa which differed from highland indigenous by their distinct languages, society organizations and agricultural practices as well by the fact they were never fully integrated into the Inca Empire and didn't endured the harsh and strict socio-economic control from the Spanish colonial administration and the Church like their highland counterparts (the Spanish Crown was mostly interested into exploiting the indigenous in the Sierra in textile workshops and largely disregarded the Costa, an area then mostly constituted by tropical forests and marshes and ravaged by malaria and considered as unsuitable for European colonization). These populations have abandoned the practice of indigenous languages by the eighteenth century to become Spanish monolingual speakers (while Kichwa language remained widely spoken in the Sierra) and intermixed with descendants of European commoners and - unlike mestizos in the highlands - descendants of African slaves.

The Montubio traditional culture is associated with the rural world of the Costa hinterland, the work in the fields (the Montubio unofficial capital, Salitre, Guayas, is also the national center of rice production), the use of agricultural tools different from the highlands (the emblematic machete), the use of specific idiomatic expressions, the wearing of distinctive garbs and hats and a widespread practice of horse-riding (celebrated in rodeos held during fiestas celebrating the Montubio identity); in a way, I guess some parallels could be drawn with Argentina's gauchos. They are also associated with the agricultural frontier as the historically underpopulated coastal provinces have experienced a continuous land-clearing since the end of the nineteenth century to develop cultures like cocoa, vegetable ivory, sugarcane, rice, banana, coffee and oil palm or raise cattle. Much of these cultures are export-oriented and became more profitable than most cultures produced in the Sierra by mestizo or indigenous farmers which are mostly domestic market-oriented.

Nevertheless, the Montubios have historically experienced economic, social and cultural marginalization, enduring exploitative labor conditions in the plantations and being excluded from political participation. They share also a feeling that their culture and history have been neglected, disregarded or even 'forgotten' by the national government, the upper classes and the urban dwellers which, for at least the two former, have been mostly constituted by whites (descendants of Spanish aristocratic families) or white-mestizo (use to include light-skinned mestizos).

Another mestizo group, the Cholos pescadores, quite similar to the Montubios but earning its livelihood from fishing, shell gathering and other sea-based activities, is also existing in the Costa and has tried, unsuccessfully, to get some recognition from the government. Some fishing communities (Huancavilca and Manta) in Santa Elena peninsula, an area that stayed away from agro-export production boom due to its dry climate, have also successfully argued of their traditional social organization into communes to be recognized as indigenous peoples by both the government and the CONAIE; nevertheless, these are Spanish monolingual communities since centuries whose indigenous identity is partly 'reconstructed'.

[omar04]

Thanks for the great overview.

[Sir John Johns]

Yeseña Guamaní (ID) has been elected on 28 October as the new second vice president of the National Assembly in succession of ousted assemblywoman Bella Jiménez, having received 83 votes in favor, 43 against and 6 abstentions. The ID, the PSC, the oficialista BAN and various independents voted in favor of Guamaní as well as a majority of the Pachakutik bench; the UNES voted against and three Pachakutik legislators abstained, notably Mireya Pazmiño, the chairwoman of the Economic Regime Commission, who had been elected to that post with the votes of the UNES and in violation of the agreement with the ID and CREO.

The daughter of an ID councillor and the niece of an ID mayor in Cayambe (a canton in northeast Pichincha mostly known for being the cradle of modern indigenous movement as this was the place where the first indigenous confederation, the Communist-supported Ecuadorian Federation of Indians, was founded in 1944), Guamaní has been elected in last February as an assemblywoman for the abomination that is 'Rest of Pichincha' electoral district, which combines together every parts of Pichincha that isn't urban or rural Quito and is made up by three non-contiguous areas. This is apparently the first electoral office held by the 34-year-old woman who has previously been employed as an anchorwoman on Ecuador TV and a journalist on Pública FM radio, two public-owned outlets, before working in the Education and Environment ministries under Moreno.

[omar04]

A picture of the district in question for anyone wondering.

[Sir John Johns]

One step towards an impeachment of Lasso?

The National Assembly's Commission for Constitutional Guarantees has approved on 5 November by six votes (3 Pachakutik and 3 UNES) against two (2 BAN) and one abstention (1 Pachakutik) a report (see also here) on the Pandora Papers case concluding that Guillermo Lasso has breached the referendum-approved '2017 ethical pact' prohibiting elected officials from having ties with offshore companies registered in tax havens. According to the commission, by 18 February 2021, Lasso had direct ownership relationships with the Panama-registered Banisi offshore company and was hence still the owner of offshore holdings.

While not openly calling for the removal of Lasso from office, the commission determined that his non-observance of the 2017 ethical pact is coming under article 130 paragraph 2 of the Constitution ('serious political crisis and internal turmoil') that could motivate impeachment proceedings. It also recommended the Assembly to approve in a plenary session a resolution ordering the president to appear before the parliament in a delay of eight days to deliver requested documents and responding legislators' questions (Lasso has already declined twice appearing before the National Assembly in the Pandora Papers case); Lasso's wife and son are also requested to appear before the National Assembly to testify in the case.

The commission has also recommended the report to be sent to the Attorney General's Office, the Comptroller General's Office, the Internal Revenue Service and the Superintendency for Banks: the first one is currently investigating the case after a complaint formally filed against the president by Yaku Pérez on 6 October while the second one is also investigating potential irregularities in Lasso's declaration of assets at the president's own request.

Finally, the commission has recommended the impeachment of unspecified authorities which 'didn't appear or provide information required by the commission', which may target the National Electoral Council (CNE) and the Electoral Dispute Tribunal (TCE) which have both dismissed in September 2020 an objection against Lasso's candidacy made by the UNES. Back in February 2019, the CNE president Diana Atamaint (a former Pachakutik legislator) barely avoided being impeached by a proceeding launched by CREO (due to a last minute defection of an Alianza PAIS legislator, leading to the collapse of the short-lived alliance between Lasso's party and Moreno’s party) while in last May Pachakutik and ID jointly announced, to no avail, they would started impeachment proceedings against the CNE and the TSE for not having approved a full recount of the 2021 presidential first round ballots in dispute. Third time's the charm?

Anyway, the commission's recommendations can still be turned down by the National Assembly and there is probably not, so far, a two-third majority to vote in favor of Lasso's impeachment, especially as it would trigger new legislative elections. Furthermore, the president of the Oversight Commission, Fernando Villavicencio, will presented on 10 November his own report on the Pandora Papers revelations covering not only allegations against Lasso but also against other Ecuadorian politicians and high officials, including presumably senior officials of the Correa administration.

The Ecuadorian government has denounced the report as a 'destabilization' driven by those 'who set up the largest corruption scheme in the history of Ecuador' and 'a coup adventure of correísmo'. The CONAIE issued today a statement warning that the 'report linking Guillermo Lasso with tax havens has serious implications, as tax havens mean tax fraud, theft, spoliation, poverty, obscene concentration of wealth and social inequality'.

The Dark Knight: Ecuadorian Edition

This doesn't augur well for the dialogue with the indigenous movement pushed by the government and for the invitation for a meeting on 10 November in Carondelet Palace sent by Lasso to Leonidas Iza.

An invitation made just one day after Lasso, currently in Spain, proudly stated than the meeting will be not with Iza but with the CONAIE and declared in an interview with the BBC that:

Mr. Iza is a coup plotter. And a democratic president can't discuss or negotiate with a coup plotter who is emulating the Joker character from Batman, that is an anarchist character. The indigenous leader is an anarchist. He is only promoting the destruction of all that exists

So, in a year, Iza went from being accused of being inspired by Peruvian Marxist thinker José Carlos Mariátegui (accusations of 'Indocommunism') to being inspired by a Hollywood superhero movie...

Tax reform going before the National Assembly

Nevertheless, the government has scored a first victory in the National Assembly on 3 November when the CAL gave the green light for the tax reform draft law to be submitted to the legislature and assigned the reviewing of the bill to the Commission for Economic, Productive and Microbusinesses Development over the Commission for Economic and Fiscal Framework. The first one is dominated by legislators more friendly toward the government and chaired by independent legislator Daniel Noboa, the son of five-time presidential candidate Álvaro Noboa, who has been elected an assemblyman for Santa Elena for Ecuatoriano Unido, a minor non-ideological party founded and controlled by one of the brothers of Lenín Moreno; the second commission is at the hands of UNES and Pachakutik critics of the Lasso government.

The National Assembly has thirty days to review, amend and pass the bill submitted under the economic urgency character; as I understand it, if no majority is reached to reject the bill, it will pass.

The increasing role of the Constitutional Court

On 4 November, the Constitutional Court has reduced from 60 to 30 days the length of the state of emergency decreed by the Lasso administration in response to the rise in criminality arguing the government failed to provide reasons for the state of emergency lasting more than one month. This may complicate the Lasso government’s plans to get two other key bills passed under urgency character in the next hundred days.

The 2019-appointed court, vilified by the Correístas, has nonetheless established itself as a relevant institutional actor (in stark contrast with previous courts either subservient to the government either crippled by internal political feuds) and as a watchdog of civil liberties having issued in less than three years a series of landmark decisions: the legalization of same-sex marriage; the decriminalization of abortion in case of rape; a ruling establishing the Ecuadorian state has no right to honor, accurate information and rectification, a right which was used to prosecute journalists and infringed on freedom of speech rights; the ruling of a Moreno administration-sponsored law enabling military to use lethal force and assist the police during protests or meetings as unconstitutional; or a ruling affirming the right of incarcerated persons to personal integrity.

[Sir John Johns]

While reasserting it is part of the opposition to the Lasso administration, the PSC has announced it will not support impeachment proceedings against Lasso making a removal from office of the president by the National Assembly less and less likely (at least in the short term) especially since a member of the Commission for Constitutional Guarantees, Édgar Quezada (Pachakutik-Sucumbíos), is now claiming the report on the Pandora Papers has been altered at last minute by the commission chairman, José Cabascango (Pachakutik-Pichincha), to include a reference to a constitutional breach and to the article 130 chapter 2 of the Constitution; according to Quezada (who voted for the report), there is no document in the report supporting the claim that the article 130.2 could be used to trigger an impeachment process against Lasso.

The CONAIE has agreed to take part on a dialogue with Lasso on 10 November but has demanded the meeting be public and a discussion on fuel prices and asked the president to clarify his involvement in the Pandora Papers scandal.

[Sir John Johns]

Another horrible bloodbath took place in an Ecuadorian jail, the Guayaquil’s Littoral Penitentiary (where 119 inmates were murdered in last September), on 12 and 13 November with 62 (the last number confirmed by Ecuadorian authorities after initial reports indicating 58 and later 68) prisoners having been killed and some 25 injured after a group of inmates tried to take control of one of the block of the penitentiary using sticks of dynamite to tear down the walls and handguns and rifles to murder their cellmates. The police has stated the deadly clashes have been triggered by the power vacuum among groups of jailed organized criminals created by the liberation, three days before the massacre, of the leader of the Los Tiguerones gang after having served 60% of his imprisonment sentence.

However, according to an article of Primicias, this was the recent transfer to the Turi prison (in Cuenca canton) of the leader of the Chone Killer gang at his own request (he argued his life was under threat) which triggered the struggle power between prison gangs, especially for control of Block F, where is located the ‘transitory area’ housing new inmates and people detained pending trial. The article is also mentioning the case of the leader of the Los Fatales gang, also detained in the Littoral Penitentiary, who is able to have access to weapons, alcohol and money, is benefiting of his own gym and even is enjoying regular and prolonged visits of his girlfriend who is able to come in his cell dressed as a prison guard, hence underlining complicity within the penitentiary administration (already pretty clear considering the easiness weapons can be boarded within the prison).

This new massacre is even more shocking for Ecuadorians than the previous ones because this time it didn’t happened in high security wards and most of the victims aren’t hardened criminals or documented gang members (for whom people has generally not much sympathy for) but people sentenced to minor offenses (like drug use or possession), awaiting being sentenced or even who found themselves trapped into prison due to lack of money or administrative problems.

Among the 48 murdered prisoners so far identified have been reported the outrageous following cases that illustrated the severe dysfunctions of the Ecuadorian penitentiary and judiciary system:

* Víctor Guaillas, a water and anti-mining activist from Azuay province who was in jail for ‘sabotage’ since his participation to the October 2019 protests and was awaiting a final judgment in the case for January 2022. Reportedly, he was suffering from a disability and was struggling to pay his legal defense. His death has been lamented by a wide range of NGOs (Federation of the Indigenous and Peasant Organizations of Azuay, Acción Ecológica, YASunidos) with the CONAIE having issued a statement demanding justice for the murdered ecologist activist.

* a 29-year-old trans woman who had served half of her 30-month prison sentence for drug use and should have, theoretically, been housed in a special block reserved to priority groups (vulnerable inmates like LGBTI people, disabled and chronically ill).

* a young man who had completed his one-year in jail sentence for having been found in possession of a baggie of drugs and whose release order arrived at the penitentiary the day of his murder with a delay his relatives having struggled to find time to fill the paperwork after official hours, the official in charge of completing the release order not daring appearing on the appointment with the young man’s aunt and the family not having the money to bribe a lawyer to ‘intercede’ in the case and speed up the procedure. Absolutely sickening story.

Also among the victims are some (minor) actors of high-profile corruption cases involving politicians or high officials:

* Abraham Muñoz, the former personal trainer of political operative Daniel Salcedo (a member of former president Abdalá Bucaram’s Fuerza Ecuador who has been sentenced few months ago to thirteen years in jail for embezzlement in a prominent and pretty insane case – Salcedo crashed a plane in Peru while trying to evade justice and it involved TV reality stars, bodybuilders, Israeli conmen posing as DEA agents and the Bucaram family – of medical supplies trafficking during the COVID-19 epidemic peak), who had been sentenced to eight years in jail for irregular sale of medicines and was awaiting the appeal trial; also murdered was a man accused of diverting medication in a Guayaquil hospital.

It should be note that Muñoz, while a cheater, clearly wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer and that Abdalá Bucaram, who is facing much more serious charges including having ordered the murder by other inmates in August 2020 of one of the fake DEA agents (then imprisoned in... the Littoral Penitentiary), has been only placed under house arrest for several months and is now only required to wear an electronic tagging device and has been able to run for assemblyman and enjoy legal immunity during the election campaign.

* John Campuzano Triviño, a former accountant for a company embroiled in the National Police Social Security Institute (Isspol) $900 million embezzlement scandal, who was in preventive detention since last September for securities fraud.

* the former manager of Seguros Sucre public-owned insurance company between 2013 and 2017, José Luis Romo, sentenced to ten years in jail for money-laundering in last September, was initially reported as dead but turned out to have been sequestered for several hours before being freed by the police and transferred to another prison.


Such massacre is once more revealing the numerous problems of Ecuador’s prison system, especially of the Littoral Penitentiary, a megaprison in which 80 unarmed prison wardens are monitoring 8,000 prisoners (a 52% overcrowding) of which 70% haven’t been definitively sentenced. One of the former directors of the Penitentiary is currently, wait for it, serving a twenty months in jail sentence for bribery after having been found guilty of having request money from the two aforementioned Israeli fake DEA agents to provide them access to a bathroom, cell phones, mattresses and ‘security’ services.


The response of the Lasso administration to the prison massacre has been heavily criticized. Firstly, it took seven hours for the police to decide launching the assault on the prison, a delay that the police commander and the Guayas governor justified by arguing that had the police entered the prison earlier it would have meant a 90% risk of death for police officers.

At the time of the massacre, the president was in Guayaquil to participate to a cocktail party organized by the US embassy in Ecuador to celebrate the anniversary of the creation of the United States Marine Corps. The mayor of Guayaquil, the prefect of Guayas as well as the governor of Guayas also attended the party with only the latter one leaving to deal with the prison riot. A minor related controversy arose over the non-celebration by the Ecuadorian government of the foundation, on a 12 November, of the country’s own corps of marines.

Furthermore, Lasso remained silent on the matter for over 30 hours (drawing unwelcomed comparison with the sole reaction of the Moreno administration in the first hours following the first massacre in late February: a post on Twitter congratulating the winner of the Ecuador's edition of Top Chef), publishing only a handful of statements on social networks.

Including a controversial one (his first statement actually) blaming the prison crisis on the Constitutional Court, demanding ‘appropriate constitutional tools to protect the population and fight the mafias that profit from chaos’ and stating that ‘the first right we must guarantee is the right to life and civic freedom, which isn’t possible if the law enforcers can’t act to protect’.

The Constitutional Court immediately replied with a statement accusing the president of ‘evading his own responsibilities’ that included the following sentence: ‘the president is reminded that the Constitutional Court is exercising its constitutional and legal duties in order to guarantee the supremacy of the Constitution’. Such an appropriate time to restart la pugna de poderes.

And if that wasn’t enough, the presidency’s spokesman (a recently created office as only posting  short funny videos on TikTok has rapidly reached its limits) declared during a TV interview that ‘one can think that the real objective [of the massacre]’ was ‘to commit a terrorist act which would shock the nation, as it has happened, to accuse the government of the massacre’, hence linking the tragedy to the (faltering) attempt to impeach the president and blaming the opposition for the shortcomings of the government.


The first concrete measure taken by the government to address the problem has been the removal from office of the head of the prison administration... only forty-seven days after his appointment to the post. And his replacement by Fausto Cobo, the retired general who participated in the 2001 coup and former ally of Lucio Gutiérrez, who has already held the post between July and September... of this year. Hence the third change at the head of the prison administration since Lasso’s inauguration six months ago... The leadership of the army was also replaced.


On 15 November, the president elaborated on his strategy to address the prison crisis, announcing notably:
* a ‘dialogue’ between prison gangs organized under the supervision of religious and academic organizations to start a ‘pacification process’
* an upcoming ‘Citizen Defense’ law to definite the ‘progressive use of force’ by law enforcers, to hold gang leaders responsible of the acts they have order their subordinates to commit
* a better access to prison privileges for prisoners requesting them
* a permanent potential participation of the police and the army in the keeping of order in the prisons
* dialogue and compensation roundtables with relatives of murdered prisoners
* pardons for prisoners suffering from ‘catastrophic illnesses’
* acceleration of the prosecutory investigations

However, as pointed out by the Primicias article, all these things are requiring parliamentary support, money, more robust institutions and the hiring of many magistrates, judges (there are only eleven judges to evaluate 5,000 pending prison privileges requests and it is estimated the justice is needing at least 573 additional prosecutors) and administrative staff.

[Sir John Johns]

Lasso’s tax reform has passed (with some help from... the UNES lawmakers)

Yesterday, the National Assembly had to decide over the fate of the tax reform bill (Organic Law for Economic Development and Fiscal Sustainability) submitted by the government under emergency.

As explained by Primicias, several outcomes were possible:

For a complete or partial approval of the tax reform, 70 votes are necessary, a high number for the government which can rely on only 26 assemblymen.

For a rejection [archivo] of the tax reform, 70 votes are also necessary. Such number isn’t that easy to reach either: the negotiations of the government are targeting an abstention of Pachakutik, the ID and the PSC in such scenario.

If no votes are reached neither for approval or rejection until Saturday, at midnight, on Sunday the tax reform would enter into force by operation of law [ministerio de la ley]. Which means that, in the absence of a resolution from the Assembly, Lasso can forward his original proposal, without any change made by legislators, to the official registry.

The UNES Correísta bench proposes a fourth way, which however hasn’t received much support: that the plenary session approved the report by minority [informe de minoría] presented by assemblyman Carlos Zambrano [UNES-El Oro]. According to Zambrano, this would allow [the state] to collect more [taxes] than what the government has planned.

As a gesture of goodwill toward Pachakutik, the CREO bench proposed to withdraw from the bill the chapter amending legislation to enable a larger participation of private companies in oil sector; in the final draft of the tax reform, eighteen changes had be made to the original bill including dropping plans to abolish inheritance tax for close relatives, a decrease of the tax on special consumption (ICE) rate on alcoholic beverages to $8/liter down from an original $10/liter rate, an increase of the tax demanded by the Internal Revenue Service to regularize assets abroad (from a 3.5/5.5% to 4.5/6.5% range) or reversing the planned abolition of the ICE on sugary beverages.

Nevertheless, the amended bill, when put to vote, was rejected by an overwhelming majority with only 30 assemblymen voting in favor (mostly BAN legislators) 88 against (UNES, the PSC, the ID and a sector of Pachakutik) and 19 abstentions (a sector of Pachakutik).

A motion was then put to vote by far-right legislator Esteban Torres (PSC-Tungurahua) to reject the report by majority and examine the report by minority drafted by Carlos Zambrano: the motion passed with 90 legislators voting in favor, 28 against and 19 abstaining. The UNES-sponsored bill, which replaces the temporary estate contributions by a 2% tax on the benefits of the 300 largest economic groups of the country, was however also rejected, having received only 48 votes in favor (the UNES), 27 against (the BAN) and 67 abstentions.

Thereafter, Mireya Pazmiño (Pachakutik-Bolívar), also the chairwoman of the Economic Framework Commission, put a motion to vote to officially reject (archivar) the tax reform. It failed as only 53 legislators (Pachakutik, the ID and the PSC) voted in favor, 3 against and the remaining 81 legislators (the BAN and the UNES) abstaining. The UNES abstention has decided the outcome of the vote.

With all parliamentary options having been exhausted without enabling the constitution of a 70-vote-majority in favor of an amended or an alternative bill, it is the initial bill of the government which should enter into force. The joys of presidentialist system and abuses of state of emergency (by Primicias’s own calculations, in the last fifteen years, there have been 109 states of emergency – at local or national level – and the country has only experienced eighteen months without a state of emergency of some sort)...

There are still some legal debates however about whether the tax reform should come into effect by operation of law, with a CREO assemblywoman ensuring that the government will analyze whether or not the vote means the green light for the reform to come into force and Esteban Torres insisting on the National Assembly having voted against the bill (apparently, there is some uncertainty whether the motion he put to vote and was approved meant a rejection of the tax reform or not).

Pachakutik, the ID and the PSC are already denouncing an alleged political pact between Lasso and the UNES to enable the passage of the tax reform with Pachakutik assemblyman Salvador Quishpe blaming the probable entering into force of the reform on the ‘alleged Citizen Revolution’. For its part, the UNES is blaming it on the ID and Pachakutik for not having voted its report by minority. As sum up by someone on Twitter, the ID and Pachakutik are accusing the UNES of conspiring with CREO and the UNES is accusing the ID and Pachakutik of conspiring with CREO while the PSC is accusing CREO of conspiring with the UNES and CREO is accusing the PSC of conspiring with the UNES.

Some reactions to the passage of the tax reform:

* Social Christian Party:

https://twitter.com/La6Ecuador/status/1464408344005951494

Now, is it clear between whom the pact is?

If the tax package, which is harming all Ecuadorians, lowering their wages and incomes and/or rising the prices of products and services needed for their subsistence, come into effect by operation of law, it is the exclusive responsibility of the national government and the UNES, which coincidentally voted to avoid the rejection of the corresponding bill.

Ecuadorians: now, is it clear between whom the pact is? Obviously, it is NOT with the Social Christian Party.

* Rafael Correa:

https://twitter.com/MashiRafael/status/1464418809197084676

Until a few hours ago, we were ‘coup plotters’. Now we are ‘accomplices’ of the government.
It is US who have the imprisoned ones, the persecuted ones.

We have OPPOSED the bill of Lasso. We presented an alternative bill which was REJECTED.

This law is NOT ours. It is the one of those who supported Lasso.

* Alejandro Jaramillo Gómez, the parliamentary leader of the ID fraction:

https://twitter.com/JaramilloG_A/status/1464430485724188672

They don’t know what happened? They don’t know about legislative procedure?

NO! Make no mistake! Here was a repugnant agreement; a criminal bargain to crush the middle class in Ecuador.

They always have gambled on operation of law and decided to sacrifice the people

* Leonidas Iza:

https://twitter.com/LeonidasIzaSal1/status/1464420516870111233

Nefarious action of the UNES with abstention in the rejection of the Economic Development Bill. This strengthens the right and the IMF, condemning thousands of families in the country, an attitude totally opposite to any left-wing stance. Explain: what was the Lasso-Correa pact?

[Sir John Johns]

Growing rumors that Correísmo has deliberately enabled the passage of the tax reform that just few days ago Pabel Muñoz, a leading UNES assemblyman and the caucus’ economic expert, described as ‘benefiting powerful groups like banks’, a ‘severe blow to middle class sectors’ and sending the message ‘leave your money abroad, I will forget the origin of the money and the tax fraud and will not pursue a tax investigation’ (see also his tweet featuring a video in which, like a schoolteacher, he is explaining the reform is bad to entrepreneurs and small businessmen and using the hashtag #NoToLassoPackage), in exchange of an alternative sentencing or the freeing for Jorge Glas, a former vice president and Correa’s right-hand man who is currently serving a combined fourteen-year sentence in jail (six years for illicit association in the Odebrecht corruption case and eight years for aggravated bribery in the Sobornos/Arroz Verde illegal campaign financing case).

The UNES has asked the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the passage of the reform by operation of law, arguing that the motion put to vote by Esteban Torres and approved by the National Assembly has rejected the government-sponsored bill. However, legal experts disagree and explain that the motion only ‘negate’ (negar) the report by majority, the necessary step to proceed to the examination of the report by minority.

There is however something fishy as Rafael Correa has closed comments on his Twitter account (presumably to not have to answer confused UNES supporters not understanding what’s going, the ones unconvinced by the explanation that this is the fault of the ID and Pachakutik not voting the report by minority and the ones already crying treason) and published ambiguous posts not helping his case:

https://twitter.com/MashiRafael/status/1464573548769554432

‘To all comrades of RC5 [Citizen Revolution; 5 is the number attributed by the CNE to the party], in face of the new attacks:
[Pope] Francis’ words fit like a glove’

Let us be fearless amid the messy situations all around us, because that is where the Lord is, in our midst; God continues to perform his miracle of bringing forth good fruit (Jn 15:5). Christian joy is born precisely of this certainty.

Responding to a post from Enrique Santos Jara, a pro-Correa academic:

https://twitter.com/MashiRafael/status/1464576541715795969

Enrique Santos Jara:

‘This wasn’t the point [thinking about the ‘persecuted’ and the ‘imprisoned’ ones]. The priority was to save millions of lives from this nefarious law. Those who pretend be revolutionaries should know that persecution and prison are part of the path. You can NEVER sacrifice the majority on behalf of the costs of defending activists’

Rafael Correa:

‘What a pity, Enrique!
Feels like the government and the law are ours, and that we were the ones who supported Lasso.
The usual problem for a certain left...
P.S.: how many times have you visited Jorge Glas?
Have you put yourself in his shoes?
How easy it is to say certain things!

Meanwhile, the CONAIE has announced it is suspending its dialogue with the Lasso administration, citing a lack of results, and the resuming of social mobilization against the government starting from January 2022.

[Sir John Johns]

Few hopes to get the tax reform repealed

The Organic Law for Economic Development and Fiscal Sustainability had been submitted by the Presidency to the Official Register which had published it, hence making it entering into force.

There are several options left to the opponents to the law to render it ineffective:

* a reform of the law initiated by the National Assembly; however, this option appears as unlikely as the constitution provides that ‘only the president may submit bills that create, change or suppress tax’.

* a repeal of the law which is requiring the drafting of a repeal bill; this would imply a quite lengthy parliamentary process (estimated at three months at least), its approval by the Legislative Technical Unit, the Legislative Administrative Council (CAL) and the approval in a plenary session of the National Assembly. However, the president has the last word and can, partially or totally, veto the bill. In case it is totally vetoed, the National Assembly can no longer debate the bill for one year but can approve it following the expiration of this period, providing there is a two-third majority (92 assemblymen) to vote in favor.

* a request before the Constitutional Court on a possible unconstitutionality of the law, based either on a technicality or on the merits.

Three Pachakutik assemblymen have already submitted a repeal bill which must follow the regular legislative procedure (by contrast to the reform submitted by the president under emergency) and has no fixed deadline to be examine.

A first request to examine the constitutionality of the reform has been fielded before the Constitutional Court by Yaku Pérez who, having only the support of a lonely legislator in the National Assembly (Bruno Segovia, elected as a Pachakutik candidate for Azuay province), is trying to get some media coverage for his, still unregistered, new party.


Ex-ID assemblyman embattled in corruption scandal remaining in office

Meanwhile, the National Assembly continues to further more embarrass itself, apparently trying to reach the record levels of disapproval of the previous legislature at the fastest pace as possible. Indeed, the Assembly refused to follow the recommendations of the parliamentary ethics committee asking for the removal of assemblyman from Pichincha Eckenner Recalde (elected as a ID candidate but now sitting as an independent) for having, according to the ethics committee, illegally received financial contributions (diezmos: ‘tithes’ aka sale of public offices) from members of his staff.

After the leaking of audios implicating Recalde and the hearing of former members of his staff, the committee voted in favor of recommending the removal of Recalde with three votes (the PK, CREO and PSC members) and two abstentions (the UNES and ID members, the first one stating ‘there are no proofs beyond testimonies’ and the second one arguing that as the one who fielded the complaint against Recalde he could not participated in the vote without being accused of partiality).

The removal of Recalde motioned by ID assemblywoman Johana Moreira failed to reach the required 92 votes to be passed, obtaining only 72 votes in favor, 2 against and 62 abstentions. The UNES caucus abstained as well as part of Pachakutik and several members of the pro-government BAN bench.

The ID legislators accused the UNES to have saved Recalde to win an additional seat in the National Assembly citing the presence of the independent legislator in several UNES-organized news conference while the UNES parliamentary leader, Paola Cabezas, stated that ‘the Ethics Committee can’t be used to fulfill political vendettas’ and that the ID should not counted on the UNES in it ‘political persecution’. Both benches traded accusations of being in collusion with the Lasso government.

Recalde has for his part denounced ‘persecution’ from the ID leadership, claimed that the audio had been edited and stated that he should be tried by the justice not by the assembly.

Beside of Recalde and the ousted second vice president of the legislature, Bella Jiménez, according to this article tracing the history of the sale of public offices in Ecuador (a practice dating back from colonial times) three others assemblymen have been accused of extorting diezmos:
* a Pachakutik assemblywoman from Napo province who had been suspended for eight days after the leaking of an audio recording her saying in a public meeting ‘if you steal, steal properly, justify properly, but do let things been seen, comrades’
* a Pachakutik assemblyman from El Oro reportedly discussing ‘work areas for loyal people’ in chats
* an independent assemblyman from Pastaza elected with the support of the PSC but has since joined the BAN caucus.


Posted without comment

https://twitter.com/RicardoPatinoEC/status/1465721932880519169

‘Rafael Correa participates in the inaugural session of the Puebla Group. He proposes to include in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to the TRUTH, the cornerstone of a real democracy’.

[Sir John Johns]

Two legal victories for environmentalists in two days

Yesterday, the Constitutional Court has ruled against the continuation of a mining project in the Íntag Valley (Imbabura, northern Sierra) after a lawsuit had been filed by the decentralized autonomous government (GAD) of Cotacachi Canton which has opposed the awarding in March 2017 of a concession to the state-owned ENAMI mining company and its Canadian partner, Cornerstone.

Controversially, the concession is including over 60% of the Los Cedros Protected Forest, which is according to a study home to at least 178 species with high risk of extinction, notably three species of monkeys (brown-headed spider monkey, Colombian white-faced capuchin, Ecuadorian mantled howler), spectacled bears, six species of cats (notably jaguar, oncilla and margay) and the little red brocket deer. In addition, 309 bird species (26 of which with high extinction risk) had been seen at Los Cedros as well as numerous frogs including the recently (2015) described mutable frog (Pristimantis mutabilis), the first known amphibian able to change its skin texture. Finally, the Los Cedros Protected Forest has a remarkable plant diversity with 299 tree species per hectare and an estimated number of 400 orchid species, seven of which having never been found elsewhere.

In its ruling, the Constitutional Court has established that the Ministry for Environment, Water and Ecological Transition, when awarding the concessions, had violated the rights of nature (referring to the Los Cedros forest) but also the right to water and the right to prior consultation of the local communities affected by the project.

The Court has ordered ENAMI and Cornerstone to refrain from carrying out mining activities and to withdraw from the Protected Forest.


Today, the Constitutional Court also ruled in favor of the YASunidos ecological group in the lawsuit opposing it to the Electoral Contentious Tribunal (TCE). In 2019, the Transitory Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control (CPCCS) has determined that the National Electoral Council (CNE) under Correa had violated the rights to participation of Ecuadorian citizens having signed in favor of the YASunidos-supported referendum on popular initiative on the opening of the Amazonian Yasuní National Park to oil drilling decided alone by Correa; the YASunidos had then collected and submitted to the CNE over 750,000 signatures (more than the 584,000 signatures required to force a referendum) of which 400,000 were nullified by the CNE in only two weeks through a process shrouded in opacity and accusations of partiality.

The YASunidos then requested the CNE to resume the process for a referendum and for the certificates of compliance of the approved signatures. This was however rejected in November 2019 by the CNE which argued the referendum process could no longer go ahead as the sponsor of the referendum on popular initiative, Julio César Trujillo, died six months before, when then the president of the CPCCS. The YASunidos appealed the decision before the TCE which denied it.

The Constitutional Court has established that this last TCE ruling rejecting the appeal ‘didn’t complied with the standards for an adequate motive’, that such ruling is invalidated and that the case is sent again to the TCE to rule on the appeal ‘in accordance with the rules of due process’.

https://twitter.com/Yasunidos/status/1466418474314514451

Yasunidos: WE WON!

The Constitutional Court of Ecuador has declared the violation of our rights regarding the popular referendum on Yasuní.

In the next days, we will held a press conference to make know the ensuing actions as an organization with regard to this victory!

Last year, the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project has detected the ongoing construction of a road running through the Yasuní National Park and heading toward the buffering zone of the ‘intangible zone’, a reserve where are living indigenous people in voluntary isolation, the Tagaeri and the Taromenane. By last August, the road had expanded and was only at 1.3 km of the buffering zone and 11.7 km of the intangible zone. The project has been denounced by various indigenous activists, ecologists and anthropologists for its environmental impact, especially because the road is clearly not the ‘ecological path’ promised by Correa and Moreno, its incidence on the Tagaeri and Taromenane communities with a risk to spread COVID-19 to paticularly vulnerable populations and the whole duplicity and lack of transparency of the Ecuadorian government on the project.


The ruling of the Constitutional Court and the reactivation of the Yasuní referendum could become major problems for Lasso’s extractive policies as the president intends to double Ecuador’s oil production and bolster mining industry.

[Sir John Johns]

Recent news from the National Electoral Council (CNE) give me the opportunity to discuss one of my guilty pleasures: Ecuador’s minor political parties which are always a source of good laugh and/or consternation. Also give me an occasion to remember some of the most embarrassing moments of the last presidential election (some I already shared on AAD). Sorry, if it’s a bit long.

Cigarettes & Alcohol (on Public Funds)

Firstly, the CNE has recently detected, when reviewing the campaign accounts of political parties and movements in previous elections since 2012 (which hasn’t been done under Correa and Moreno...), various irregularities in the accounts of the Avanza party including the use of the state-financed Permanent Party Fund (FPP) to pay for activities theoretically not falling under the scope of the expenses covered by the FPP like the purchase of food, plants or alcoholic beverages and the payment for the use of popular music bands, for garden maintenance or for Christmas videos, all of this amounting for $78,000.

Additional $58,000 were also found to have been used by Avanza for the purchase of toys, candy, televisions, kitchenettes, gas cylinders, publication of condolences in the press, cigarettes and alcoholic beverages.

Avanza as well as the Democratic Left (ID) and the United Society for More Action (SUMA) (no details on the irregularities of the accounts of these parties) have fifteen days to present justifications for their disputed electoral expenses.

A binge drinking del carajo

Not particularly surprising coming from Avanza as this party, quite accurately described by a political scientist as a ‘desideologized ID’, was founded by Ramiro González, a former ID bigwig who had served as the director of the Ecuadorian Social Security Institute (IESS) under Correa before turning against this later and has fled in Peru in August 2017 to evade arrest and prosecution in a case of illicit enrichment.

To tell you how serious are the self-proclaimed ‘social-democratic’ credentials of Avanza, the party nominated as its 2021 presidential candidate Isidro Romero, a wealthy businessman who used to chair Guayaquil’s main soccer club, the Barcelona Sporting Club, but is living in Spain since two decades; Romero used to be married with the sister of Álvaro Noboa, a banana tycoon and the owner of one of the largest conglomerate in Ecuador, Corporación Noboa as well as a five-time presidential candidate (1998, 2002, 2006, 2009 and 2013) who was managed to be defeated in three presidential runoffs in a raw, each time against a different candidate.

In the last presidential election, Romero campaigned as a low-cost tropical counterfeit version of Donald Trump, spending his time making the most outrageous comments and the most demagogic promises possible.

He notably proclaimed he would ‘disinfect politics’ and start ‘a new history which will left behind the political mafias that are vampires, that are sucking the blood of the people’ and promised that if elected the Barcelona Sporting Club would win the Copa Libertadores, that capital punishment would be reintroduced for murderers and rapists and prison for life would be instituted for corrupted politicians, that he would solve employment problems by sowing 200,000 hectares in six months hence enabling the creation of one million jobs (explaining in the interview to the rather serious El Comercio that ‘if I have sowed 200,000 agricultural hectares in six months, and 200,000 additional hectares in the following six months, I have already practically reached about 2 million jobs. That is the end of that problem in this country’), that unemployed Venezuelan migrants would have to leave Ecuador in a delay of 24 hours and, his most realistic but not very reasonable promise for a 78-old man, that he would celebrated his victory by having a binge drinking del carajo in his first day in office.

Predictably, Romero received only 1.9% of the vote (still placing sixth out of sixteen candidates), claimed that ‘an enormous fraud’ directly impacted his candidacy before being unsuccessfully sued before the Electoral Contentious Tribunal (TCE) for ‘political discrimination and violence’ after having belittled and insulted on Twitter her former running-mate (implying she had been selected after her name had been suggested by an adviser to Romero she ‘has a great relationship’ with).

In the final stretch of the runoff election, Romero (but not Avanza) publicly endorsed Arauz after having signed an agreement ‘for agricultural and productive reactivation’ (on 1st April!) with Arauz boasting in the same tweet having the support of both Romero and Jaime Vargas, one of the radical indigenous leaders of the anti-austerity 2019 protests. In a later interview, Romero stated that while in Ecuador, he is supporting Arauz, in Spain he is supporting the PP or Vox. How do you frame that into a coherent left-right political spectrum, I don’t know.

For its part, Avanza managed to still win two seats in the National Assembly, one in Carchi and one in Los Ríos where the 25-year-old elected candidate was replacing on the Avanza list his uncle, a local caudillo, who had been murdered by unknowns at the start of the campaign.

Five parties terminated

The CNE has also ruled in favor of the de-registration of five national political parties (Fuerza Ecuador; United Ecuadorian; Social Justice; Ecuadorian Union; Concertation) after having concluded they are no longer meeting requirements to keep legal status. Three additional parties (Ecuadorian Socialist Party; Construye; Podemos) managed to avoid this fate for now.

Six other political parties (Popular Unity; Patriotic Society; Avanza; AMIGO; Democracia Sí; SUMA and... Alianza PAIS, once the hegemonic party) are under threat to disappear in case of bad results in the 2023 local elections or, I guess, in case early elections are triggered by a muerte cruzada.

The requirements to keep legal status are:
- having obtained at least 4% of valid votes in two distinct and consecutive pluripersonal nationwide elections
- or, having three representatives in the National Assembly
- or, having at least 8% of mayor offices in the country (there are 221 cantons, headed by a mayor, in Ecuador)
- or, having at least one councilor in at least 10% of the country’s cantons

A loophole in the previous election law (which forgot to mention the requirements to keep legal status also applied to ‘political movements’ and not to the sole ‘political parties’ – I never really understood the difference between both) has been since corrected but not after having enabled eight political organizations (Ecuadorian Union; Democratic Center; Concertation; Popular Unity; Avanza; Patriotic Society; Fuerza Ecuador; Adelante Ecuatoriano Adelante) to avoid deregistration two years ago.

Hard to say this is a sad day for democracy because four of the eliminated parties have just been comedy gold and/or scams which embarrassed themselves during the last presidential election and the remaining one never managed to take off in its fifteen-year-long lifespan.

The de-registered political parties are the following ones:

Concertation

Concertation Movement (Movimiento Concertación), was the only one of the list with a relatively identifiable and coherent political position, at least by Ecuadorian standards, standing for some of centrist – but leaning to the right – civic liberalism mixed with a strong anti-corruption rhetoric. It has been initially founded in 2007 as the National Democratic Concertation Movement by César Montúfar, a university professor in political sciences and a former executive director of Citizen Participation, an NGO dedicated to monitor electoral processes in Ecuador and conduct voter awareness campaigns. After having been de-registered a first time in 2012 due to weak electoral results, it was re-registered two years later but, bar the 17% obtained by Montúfar in the 2019 Quito mayoral race, never managed to achieve electoral breakthrough.

Montúfar has been one of the most vocal critic of the Correa administration in the areas of corruption and civil rights from a centrist standpoint firstly as an assemblyman (2007-13), then as the private prosecutor in the 2017 judicial proceedings against former vice president Jorge Glas.

A presidential candidate in last election supported by the so-called ‘Honesty Alliance’ formed by his Concertation Movement and the Ecuadorian Socialist Party (PSE), Montúfar campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, throwing during the presidential debates (never substantiated) accusations at Guillermo Lasso of being involved in the ISSPOL scandal and canvassing the country on a bike.

Montúfar placed twelfth out of sixteen candidates, receiving only 0.6% of the valid votes. His ‘Honesty Alliance’ was more successful, however, managing to get two assemblymen elected including its top candidate on the national list, Fernando Villavicencio, a journalist specialized in corruption scandals and a former member of Pachakutik who unsuccessfully tried to run for assemblyman in 2017 as a candidate for CREO (his candidacy was then disqualified by the CNE because he was still technically a member of Pachakutik).

Montúfar has reemerged on last September to announce he has sent Lasso a ‘concrete proposal’ to fight corruption that should be ‘a state policy of highest priority’. Apparently no news since then.

The Moreno Bros’ Parties

‘United Ecuadorian’ (Ecuatoriano Unido) was founded in 2015 by Edwin Moreno, a brother of Lenín Moreno accused of having registered offshore companies in Belize and Panama. It got official registration in September 2018 in time to participate in the local elections of the following year when it won alone 2 mayorships and 12 additional ones as part of multi-party alliances (including in Cuenca where a center-left candidate focusing his campaign on poverty and economic inequalities issues was unexpectedly elected mayor) then masquerading as a humanist, progressive and center-left movement supporting or opposing the Moreno administration when convenient.

According to this GK article, United Ecuadorian’s declaration of ideological principles includes the formulation ‘lucha por la democracia entendida como un sistema de vida fundado en el constante mejoramiento económico, político, social y cultural del pueblo’ ([the party] ‘fights for democracy understood as a way of life based on constant economic, political, social and cultural improvement of the people’) that a quick Google search shows as also appearing in the declaration of principles of the Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party.

In the 2021 presidential election, United Ecuadorian shifted hard right, running as candidate for president the Brazilian-born evangelical pastor, Gerson Almeida who, claimed to be ‘neither left- nor right-wing’ because such concepts are ‘academic dogmas’ that don’t exist ‘in practical terms’ (in United Ecuadorian universe, certainly) stood for what he called ‘ethical pragmatism’.

Such term apparently means unhinged homophobia, misogyny and the spreading of blatant anti-vax lies as Almeida, the representative in Ecuador of the Peruvian-based ‘Don’t mess with my children’ homophobic protest movement which is pretending denouncing George Soros’ secret plans to turn the whole humanity into homosexuals, campaigned on complete prohibition of abortion, the creation of a ministry for Family, a stricter drug legislation and the opposition of the closure of illegal ‘clinics’ ‘curing’ homosexuality (that don’t exist in Ecuador according to Almeida despite numerous reports of Ecuadorian homosexuals having been sequester, torture and rape in such ‘clinics’ to ‘correct’ their sexual orientation) and to mandatory vaccination, claiming notably that people who have received a seasonal flu shot are much more affected by COVID-19.

Almeida placed eighth in the presidential election with 1.7% of the valid votes while two United Ecuadorian were elected provincial assemblymen: Marco Troya (ex-PRE, ex-Alianza PAIS) in Los Ríos, a province he was the prefect between 2009 and 2019 when a local supporter of Correa and later of Moreno; and Daniel Noboa, the son of Álvaro Noboa.

At last news, Almeida was selling his ‘ethical pragmatism’ in Dominican Republic.

Note that another party, Libertad es Pueblo, was founded by another brother of Lenín Moreno, Gary Moreno, but was deregistered in October 2020 by the CNE after irregularities had been detected in the signatures submitted by the party to obtain its registration.

A month before, Libertad es Pueblo had withdrawn its support to the presidential candidate it had selected during its internal primaries, Esteban Quirola, a former prefect of El Oro and once a member of the center-right SUMA (who, while a prefect, was sentenced to ten days in jail and community work for having punched in the head a jurist who had criticized him on Twitter while also sued by his vice-prefect for ‘discrimination’) after Gary Moreno had, according to his own account, discovered that Quirola was a ‘mole of Correísmo’...

In the 2019 election for mayor of Guayaquil, Libertad es Pueblo ran as candidate Juan Manuel Bermúdez, aka ‘Charles Bronson’, a former municipal police intendant who advocated a zero-tolerance policy toward criminals and the implementation of his so-called ‘Bronson Safety Plan’ inspired by the policies implemented by Rudy Giuliani when mayor of New York.



One can note the irony of his campaign slogan, ‘the law is the law’, appearing in smaller characters under his main promise: a decrease in 70% in the traffic fines imposed by the Municipal Transit Authority. In an interview he explained that, unlike other candidates also promising a decrease in the amount in traffic fines, if elected, he would be legally forced to implement his promise because this was written down in his official platform sent to the CNE. Bermúdez received only 0.8% of the vote; still better than the 0.6% of his rival from United Ecuadorian who apparently proposed to fight insecurity with drones throwing nets on criminals.

[Sir John Johns]

The Force of the Poor (Season 38)

Fuerza Ecuador (FE) has been the party created in 2015 by then-exiled in Panama former president (for five months in 1996-97) Abdalá Bucaram, the self-proclaimed ‘Force of the Poor’ aka ‘the Madman’ or ‘the Cry of Agony of Populism’, and his son, former soccer player Abdalá ‘Dalo’ Bucaram Pulley. It replaced Bucaram’s previous party, the historical Ecuadorian Roldosist Party (PRE), which had been on life support since the mid-2000s and had lost its registration in 2014 after an alliance with evangelical groups had failed to revive the electoral fortunes of the party.

Running himself for president in 2017, Dalo Bucaram managed to receive 4.8% of the vote (a respectable result considering the disastrous reputation of the PRE and the toxic legacy of his father) but FE suffered from the return of Abdalá in Ecuador few months thereafter, once judicial proceedings against him in various corruption affairs had fallen under statute of limitations.

In 2020, after having previously announced he would not run for president, Abdalá changed his mind and announced a presidential bid to prevent his arch-nemesis Jaime Nebot (who ultimately renounced himself to run for president) from becoming the next president of Ecuador. Nevertheless, Abdalá decided finally to run for assemblyman as the FE top candidate on the national list presumably to obtain parliamentary immunity in the scandal of misappropriation and illegal sales of medical devices he found himself embroiled in.

Notably, Abdalá was accused of having ordered the murder of an Israeli conman imprisoned in the Littoral Penitentiary with which he and his family was doing shady businesses. In a surrealistic – even by Bucaram’s standards – episode, an impressive armed police commando raided in August 2020 the house of the former president to arrest him. They found in his bed wearing the electronic tagging device required by the justice with all the scene being aired live on TV. Shortly thereafter, he was still authorized to run for assemblyman...

Dalo, by then living in Florida, was also investigated in the case as well as two other sons of Abdalá, Michel and Jacobo (this latter already infamous for the party he purportedly organized in 1996 to celebrate his first $1 million earned after few weeks as the unofficial head of the customs administration in his father’s government).

Fuerza Ecuador also tried to run as candidate for assemblyman for Guayas the main protagonist of the scandal, Daniel Salcedo (this was rejected by the electoral authorities because he didn’t came to the CNE office to register in person for the good reason he was in prison) and awarded the ninth spot on the national list to an illegitimate son Abdalá fathered while in exile whom nobody had previously heard of until August 2020. The following month, the former president confirmed he is the father of eleven children, four with his wife and seven more with four different women (when in exile, Abdalá never missed an opportunity to mention how unhappy he was to be separated from his wife...)

After having planned to run as candidate for president Miguel Salem Kronfle, a childhood friend, business partner and former minister of Abdalá, with Gustavo Bucaram (apparently the only brother of Abdalá who had never run for office; Adolfo, Jacobo and Santiago have all been congressmen and so has been his sister, Elsa, also a former mayor of Guayaquil) as his running-mate, Fuerza Ecuador instead settled on the candidacy of Carlos Sagnay, a businessman in oil sector who had already ran twice for president: in 2006 as the candidate of the dying Alfarist Radical Front then renamed Alfarist National Integration, and in 2009 as the candidate of his own short-lived party, the Triunfo Mil Movement. Sagnay had received respectively 0.2% and 1.6% of the vote.

I have no clue for what Sagnay was precisely standing for (him running for a different party at each election doesn’t help), his platform having been a collection of platitudes and vague promises, but that’s not very important because just a week before the first round, Abdalá decided to ditch Sagnay, citing the unwillingness of the candidate to defend the former president from accusations of corruption, withdrew the support of FE to the candidate and hinted he would vote for Arauz, an endorsement the UNES candidate immediately rejected for pretty obvious reasons.

Having received only 0.9% of the vote in the election of national assemblymen, Fuerza Ecuador failed to get Abdalá Bucaram elected to the National Assembly and to win a single seat in the legislature. For his part, Sagnay only received 0.3% of the vote, a result even more pathetic than his two previous presidential bids...

Amazingly enough, Abdalá Bucaram didn’t reacted in a first time to the de-registration of his party on his Twitter account, preferring talking about soccer and announcing the opening of the GP Burger restaurant owned in Panama by his daughter-in-law, Gabriela Pazmiño (the wife of Dalo who used to be between 2009 and 2013 a part-time PRE assemblywoman, part-time presenter of idiotic TV-shows). Hope there isn’t ‘Abdalac’ milk on their menu.

https://twitter.com/abdalabucaram/status/1464546906437206016

So everybody was thinking the Abdalá show would conclude like The Sopranos with an anticlimactic end in a restaurant.

But he finally awoke yesterday and post this tweet, hinting he will go the courts to continue his show (and apparently, they stole him 1,200,000 votes in the election):

https://twitter.com/abdalabucaram/status/1466463908701609986

Joke aside, Fuerza Ecuador was the last remaining direct successor of the old Concentration of Popular Forces (CFP), the matrix of Costa’s traditional populism which emerged in the late 1940s, having buried all other splits from the CFP (APRE, Pueblo Cambio y Democracia, Assad Bucaram Party or Álvaro Noboa’s PRIAN, itself a split from the PRE) and the CFP itself (which disappeared in the mid-2000s).

The scopolamined presidential candidate

The Ecuadorian Union (Unión Ecuatoriana) was founded in 2014 as a self-described ‘movement equidistant from extremes, centrist and pluralist’ by Washington Pesántez, a jurist who had served as an attorney-general (2007-11) under Correa (Pesántez and Correa knew each other since the 1990s when both studied in Louvain Catholic University).

Running for president in 2017 on a nondescript platform (‘Pesántez is neither left-wing nor right-wing. He proposes a third way’), the very controversial former attorney general placed last out of eight candidates with 0.7%. The party won no seat in the National Assembly.

The party was more successful in the 2019 local elections when it agreed to lent its support to the candidacy of Jorge Yunda. This latter was unexpectedly elected mayor of Quito in a four-way race, receiving 21.4% against 18.4% for the Correísta candidate, 17.8% for the ID candidate, former mayor Paco Moncayo (widely considered as the front-runner before election day) and 16.9% for César Montúfar. Fourteen other candidates were running.

Then came the 2021 presidential election, which turned into a trainwreck of epic proportions for the Ecuadorian Union.

Discussions were reportedly started with putative candidates who had no political party to support their bids like Álvaro Noboa (whose party had been de-registered) or Isidro Romero. For his part, the leader of the National Peasant Movement, Richard Intriago, who has political ambitions accused in August 2020 the Ecuadorian Union of demanding him $1.3 million and two pickups to ‘rent’ the party in support of his presidential bid and claimed that the price for being an Ecuadorian Union candidate for national assemblyman is $400,000 and for provincial assemblyman $200,000. In any case, Intriago renounced to run as well as Noboa (he would latter changed his mind...) while Romero secured the support of Avanza.

Too bad they couldn’t got Romero because the campaign of the loudmouth millionaire looks like a tremendous success and a masterpiece of no-nonsense approach compared to the surreal one of Giovanny Andrade, the self-described ‘expert in mining issues’ and founder of the unregistered Broad Movement for Democracy (MAD, an unfortunate acronym) nobody has heard off before the Ecuadorian Union selected him as its presidential candidate, only few days after the own candidacy of Washington Pesántez had been rejected because he didn’t go registered it in person for some reason and just few weeks after Pesántez had announced the party would not run a candidate in the presidential election.

As early as October 2020, GK published information on Andrade tending to indicate he is a bit shady. Andrade’s Linkedin page mentioned he is the manager of the ‘Integral Plan of Futurist Touristic Human Social Mining Development of Ecuador’, the ‘creator of the sentences El oro del Ecuador es de todos los Ecuatorianos [‘The gold of Ecuador belongs to all Ecuadorians] and El Ecuador vale oro (‘Ecuador is worth gold’), the ‘mindsetter of the Union of Latin American Mining’, a consultant in the area of financial mining in Catamarca Province, Argentina, and an ‘expert in mining administration with experience in financial mining caring for environment’ even if no trace could be found of his degree on the register of the Ecuadorian Secretary for Superior Education, Science, Technology and Innovation. Additionally, the Chilean Ecuadorian Mining Chamber he pretended to be the president was still in the process of registering and its official website still under construction, only displaying a webpage with the sole El Ecuador vale oro sentence.

Thereafter, El Universo claimed that Andrade had previously intruded in a convention on mining by presenting himself as the future minister for mining under Lenín Moreno (when asked by El Universo, Andrade mentioned being friend with two brothers of the president since fifteen years...) and that he is truly obsessed with ‘financial mining’ (making money in mining while keeping mineral ore underground if I understand correctly). Reached by the newspaper, the National Chamber for Mining indicated it has nothing to do with Andrade, mentioning he isn’t a mining expert. When asked about Andrade, Pesántez confessed he hardly knew him and had only met him before for a few minutes.

At the end of November, it was revealed that the 36-page plan of government (the candidate’s official political diagnosis and platform) sent by Andrade to the CNE had been plagiarized at 61% on Wikipedia (it also mentioned that Gerson Almeida’s own plan of government was inflated by repeating three paragraphs).

In early December, the Ecuadorian Union withdrew its support to Andrade, citing not only of the case of plagiarism (claiming that the plan of government collectively elaborated by the party had been ‘inexplicably’ replaced by Andrade’s own amateur plan) but also the fact that Andrade had lied on his educational background. The deadlines to submit a new candidacy having expired, the Ecuadorian Union could only prevented Andrade to use the party’s money for his campaign. Seems that the scammers had been scammed by another scammer...

Andrade’s campaign turned even more into a joke after a disastrous performance during the debates when he declared that enabling the right for citizens to carry arms would be a ‘cadastral’ error, said that ‘corruption must be detected before it happens’ (all you need is hiring precogs, I guess) and, when asked about the 2,000 raped and pregnant teenagers each year, responded that ‘We must see why these children have sex so early and why they leave their home and have to look after rapists’, an answer which was widely criticized on social networks for apparently blaming the teenagers for having been raped.

Andrade tried to justify his poor performance by pretending having been drugged before the debate with a cup of coffee containing scopolamine. The effects of the drug hadn’t apparently totally worn off when, few days thereafter, he proposed building a Formula 1 circuit on the site of the ghost Pacific Refinery (a 540-hectare plot of land with no permanent construction on it but that have still costed over $1,500 million spent into clearing, leveling and corruption).

Andrade only gathered 20,245 votes in the first round, accounting for 0.2% of the valid votes, placing fifteenth out of sixteen candidates (yes, a candidate managed to receive even less votes than the guy nobody understood how he managed to be nominate a candidate for president). He since has added ‘candidate to the presidency of the Republic of Ecuador’ in his résumé on his Linkedin profile.

Ecuadorian Union still managed to win a seat in Chimborazo, the native province of Pesántez.

[Sir John Johns]

The old man and the treadmill

Social Justice (Justicia Social) was a movement officially registered in November 2017 and headed by Jimmy Salazar, the president of the lawyers’ guild of Guayas, and his wife, Pamela Martínez, a childhood friend of Rafael Correa and then a vice president of the Constitutional Court. After her removal from office with the rest of the court bench in 2018 as part of the referendum-approved but constitutionally quite dubious purge of Correa loyalists in the judicial system, Martínez was arrested in connection with the Arroz Verde/Sobornos illegal financing case. She accepted to cooperate with the justice and became the key witness in the corruption trial against Correa and Jorge Glas, testifying having served as a middlewoman between high officials or companies (like Odebrecht) and the leadership of Alianza PAIS to illegally transfer money. Martínez was sentenced in September 2020 to nine months in jail for bribery and freed in February 2021.

In the meantime, Jimmy Salazar ran in 2019 for prefect of Guayas but received only 1.7% of the votes. In November 2019, a former vice-mayor of Quito claimed having been asked $150,000 in exchange of the support of the Social Justice party infrastructure in her bid to run in the 2019 local elections.

In June 2019, Social Justice had been one of the four parties irregularities had been found in the registration process by the Comptroller-General’s Office; the three other parties were Social Commitment Force (the Correístas, after having lost control of Alianza PAIS to Moreno, took over taking opportunity of the sentencing of the party’s founder to jail), Libertad es Pueblo and Juntos Podemos. The CNE canceled the registration of these four parties; however, after a legal battle and a dispute between the CNE and the Electoral Contentious Tribunal (TCE), only Libertad es Pueblo was de-registered, the three other parties being enabled to participate in the 2021 elections.

In August 2020, Social Justice selected its presidential candidate and it was no less than Fabricio Correa, the own brother of Rafael and a businessman accused of having been illegally favored in the awarding of public contracts in the first years of the presidency of his brother. Rafael reacted by posting a tweet explaining he was ashamed this looks like the political dynasties he ‘had always fought’ (which is why his sister, Pierina, who can’t even managed a sport federation without turning it into a complete chaos, was selected as the top candidate on the UNES national list).



Fabricio isn’t Rafael, that’s a powerful campaign argument...

One month later, Fabricio Correa and his running-mate announced the end of their presidential bid, arguing there were ‘Correísta infiltrators’ and ‘questionable persons’ in Social Justice and that they would not lend themselves to ‘pimps’ because this would have infringed their ‘unwavering principles’.

Then, as summed up in this article, things became totally absurd. The day of the deadline for registering candidacies, Social Justice obtained from the TCE the restoration of its registration and tried to register its new candidate for president, Carlos Cassanello, who had previously run for mayor of Guayaquil under the banner of the party and obtained 0.6% of the votes.

However, according to the statement published on Facebook by Social Justice, it was impossible to register the candidacy of Cassanello, because allegedly another person had been registered without their knowledge as the candidate of the party for president: Álvaro ‘losing elections since 1998’ Noboa, whose party, Adelante Ecuatoriano Adelante, had been de-registered few months before due to weak electoral results. The CNE computer system rejected the change of names. The president of the CNE would later confirmed that Noboa was trying to register his presidential candidacy the day before the deadline even if it was unknown for which party he intended running for.

Afterwards, it was never heard about the candidacy of Cassanello again and the author of the article stated the leadership of Social Justice never answered her questions. Reportedly, the party never released an official statement supporting the candidacy of Noboa. Still the banana tycoon released a video in early November announcing his candidacy for president with the support of Social Justice.

Salazar confirmed later his support to Noboa’s candidacy even if Noboa’s campaign director, Sylka Sánchez (also the legal director of Corporación Noboa), acted as the de facto legal representative of Social Justice in the medias. Her husband, Gino Cornejo, who had run for mayor of Guayaquil in 2019 as the candidate of Noboa’s party and against the previous Social Justice candidate, was selected as the new running-mate of Noboa to replace, if the GK article is to be believed, the name of Fabricio Correa’s running-mate that was registered in October (unwillingly?) at the same time than Noboa’s candidacy.

To show how Social Justice was a serious political party, the following message was published on Noboa’s priceless website (here in its English translation as the major part of the website is translated into English):

Do you want to be an Assemblyman?

The next Assembly, that is, that of 2021 must have the best minds in the country, for this our party will interview any citizen who wants to be interviewed and must bring the curriculum for that interview, we will measure in that citizen his intelligence, his honesty, his ability to work and his desire to move the country forward. Glory to God, long live Ecuador !!!

Apparently to dispel insistent rumors about his declining health (he really looks like as sedated in some of his videos), Noboa published a video in which he presented (very very very succinctly) his priorities before running on a treadmill (the most WTF moment of the election which generates several memes and was even spoofed by Xavier Hervas on Tik Tok):

In the meantime, a CNE councilor has advised against the registration of Noboa’s candidacy, mentioning evidences about the sale of a party or exchange of favors while both CREO and the PSC challenged the candidacy of Noboa before justice, fearing it could hurt the candidacy of Guillermo Lasso.



Do you know that Abraham Lincoln was candidate for president of the USA eight times [citation needed]?

Perseverance is the attribute of winners and achievers.

Then a ping-pong legal battle ensued between the CNE and the TCE over the cancellation or not of the registration of Social Justice and over the possibility for the party to field candidates not only after the deadline but even after the official beginning of the campaign. The CNE was insisting on rejecting the candidacies fielded in the name of Social Justice while the TCE insisted on the CNE having to accept them. Legal experts pointed a contradiction in the ruling of the TCE (establishing firstly that all candidacies presented by Social Justice should be registered then declaring it is the decision of the CNE to define which candidacies should be registered). On 6 January 2021, a judge dismissed four members of the CNE including its president for failing to comply with the TCE ruling; another judge reversed the decision few days later.

In late December, the TCE had however definitely ruled against a candidacy of Noboa, arguing that the internal primaries of Social Justice had selected Fabricio Correa as the party’s candidate and that new ones couldn’t been held.

On 30 January, the TCE dismissed a request by Jimmy Salazar to bestow more time to Social Justice to register candidates for the Andean Parliament, a largely useless assembly in which Social Justice had zero chance to win a seat. The election was to be held a week later and the printing of the ballots for Andean Parliament elections was pending a final decision.

In the end, Social Justice ran candidates in only eleven provinces for a grand total of 25.970 votes received corresponding to 0.3% of the valid votes cast in election of provincial assemblymen. Obviously, it didn’t won a single seat. This was worth threatening to derail the whole electoral process...


Hard to believe after that (and I haven’t mentionned AMIGO), but there are legal requirements to register a political party or movement, notably drafting a declaration of principles and presenting a ‘registry of members’ accounting for 1.5% of the total electorate in the latest elections (meaning currently gathering about 196,000 signatures).

[Sir John Johns]

The Comptroller-General’s Office buried the investigation on Pandora Papers

Just few hours before the National Assembly discussed the report on the offshore companies owned by President Lasso and exposed by the Pandora Papers, the acting comptroller general, Carlos Ríofrio (the post has no permanent holder since the flee to Florida in May 2017 of Carlos Pólit to evade arrest in connection with the Odebrecht case; his successor on an acting basis during almost four years, Pablo Celi, is himself currently in jail for allegations of corruption) has decided to close the investigation about possible breach of law by Lasso when registering his 2021 candidacy and running for president.

According to the Comptroller-General’s Office, ‘objective information has not been found to demonstrate that, at the time of the registration of his candidacy for constitutional president of the Republic of Ecuador and when performing that said office, he [Lasso] was the direct or indirect owner of assets or capitals in jurisdictions or [financial] regimes considered as tax havens’. It also stated that Lasso wasn’t, from the period ranging from September 23, 2020 to May 24, 2021, the direct or indirect owner of the fourteen companies mentioned in the Pandora Papers and registered in Panama, Cayman Islands or the United States.

Furthermore, it specified that South Dakota isn’t considered as a tax haven or a jurisdiction under a preferential tax regime according to the Ecuadorian law. Indeed, South Dakota isn’t appearing on the list of the 88 tax havens established in 2017 by the Ecuadorian Internal Revenue System, a list that haven’t been updated since (neither are appearing other US states like Delaware or Florida, nor Switzerland unlike Svalbard and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon).

The National Assembly voted against starting impeachment proceedings against Lasso

During yesterday’s session, the National Assembly discussed three successive motions on Lasso’s name being mentioned in the Pandora Papers and its political implications.

A first motion, sponsored by Paola Cabezas, the parliamentary leader of the UNES, calling for the impeachment of President Lasso on the basis that a severe political crisis and internal commotion had been triggered by the Pandora Papers revelations, was put to vote. It was rejected with only 51 legislators (the UNES plus a few legislators from other benches) voting in favor, 77 (BAN, ID, PSC, independents and the majority of Pachakutik) voting against and 7 (a minority of Pachakutik) abstaining.

The president of the commission for Constitutional Guarantees, José Cabascango (Pachakutik), then sponsored a motion demanding the summoning of Lasso before the National Assembly within thirty days to answer legislators about his presumed ownership of offshore companies in tax havens. Cabascango’s motion was however undermined by previous accusations made by his fellow Pachakutik legislator, Sofía Sánchez (elected from Azuay), in the beginning of the sessions on the report on the Pandora Papers having been rushed and irregularly passed by the commission for Constitutional Guarantees. The motion also failed, having received the support of only 61 lawmakers (the UNES and a first sector of Pachakutik) with 47 voting against (BAN, ID, independents and a second sector of Pachakutik) and 27 abstaining (the PSC and a third sector of Pachakutik).

A third motion, sponsored by Alejandro Jaramillo, the ID parliamentary leader, was then put to vote. It ‘urges the president of the Republic to appear before the Assembly plenary in order to explain his possible direct and indirect involvement in the ownership of properties and assets in tax havens’, without any binding character nor specific timeframe while also asking the comptroller-general’s office, the prosecutor’s office, the superintendency of Banks, the IRS and the Unity of Economic and Financial Analysis (in charge of providing analysis and information to the Treasury) to review the bank accounts, the corporate and fiduciary holdings, the properties, the tax returns and assets of Lasso in relation with the Pandora Papers and proposing the sending of the report of the Commission for Constitutional Guarantee to the aforementioned institutions in order to initiate actions, if applicable. The motion passed with 82 legislators voting in favor (the UNES, the ID and a sector of Pachakutik), 33 against (BAN) and 20 abstaining (the PSC and three Pachakutik lawmakers).

Assemblyman César Rohón (ex-PSC, now independent) appealed the third motion, arguing it had been passed without following regular procedural norms. The appeal was rejected by the lawmakers with only 4 legislators supporting it, 123 opposing it and 5 abstaining. A motion put by Diego Ordóñez (CREO) to reconsider Jaramillo’s motion was subsequently defeated.

Lasso has since announced he will not appear before the National Assembly to explain his presumed ties with offshore companies and also denounced the ‘conspiratorial’ attitude of the UNES caucus. Meanwhile, the CONAIE has released a statement publicly denouncing the attitude of a ‘sector of Pachakutik, which, led by the president Guadalupe Llori, the head of the caucus, Rafael Lucero, and the national direction of the Pachakutik movement, has been active openly protecting the interests of the government, in opposition to the principles and the political project of the indigenous movement and social organizations’.

The Lasso administration defeated in parliament over 2022 budget

That same day, the government scored a defeat in the National Assembly in the discussions about the 2022 general budget as the lawmakers approved a series of observations they had elaborated on the proposed budget (dealing mostly with expenditures allocated to health, education and social rehabilitation considered as insufficient and greater details on the income expected from the sale or concession of public-owned companies). The observations were approved by 96 legislators, exceeding the qualified majority (92 votes), and received the support of the UNES, Pachakutik, the ID and the PSC.

There are disagreements between the National Assembly and the government about whether the observations should be followed to correct the budget or not.

Jorge Glas’ uncle granted parole

Ricardo Rivera, the uncle of former vice president Jorge Glas, has been granted parole on 7 December after having served 60% of his six-year prison term; he had been sentenced in December 2017 with his nephew, a business and two state officials for unlawful association in the Odebrecht corruption case. The judge has motivated his decision by Rivera’s good conduct and the absence of other proceedings against him. Rivera will still have to wear an electronic tagging device, appear regularly before justice authorities and perform insertion activities while being prohibited from leaving Ecuador.

Rivera has been accused of having served as a middleman between Jorge Glas and businessmen in the negotiations of public contracts in exchange of kickbacks and in the financing of election campaigns, notably with José Conceição dos Santos, the representative of Odebrecht in Ecuador as exposed in August 2017 by the disclosure of an audio recording Rivera asking Conceição ‘money for the vidrio [‘glass’ in Spanish, the alias used by the vice president in his dealings] and discussing a bank account in a foreign country in the name of Tomislav Topic (a telecommunication businessman accused of managing secret bank accounts on behalf of Rivera and channeling money from Chinese businessmen through offshore companies) and a video secretly recorded by Conceição in the room of the Quito Swissotel in which both men were discussing about the payment of money to ‘the campaign of vidrio’, the $1 million the Odebrecht representative owed to Rivera and a bank account linked to Telconet, the company owned by Topic.

[Sir John Johns]

https://twitter.com/afinaldejornada/status/1467861456012165124

Alianza PAIS renaming itself the Democratic Revolutionary and Ethical Green Movement (MOVER: ‘Move’). That’s a lot of lies in only five words and even the acronym isn’t right; this should have be ‘MOVERD’ or ‘MOVERDE’. The party, which has lost parliamentary representation and whose presidential candidate, Ximena Peña, had received 1.5% of the vote in last February, is now trying to rebrand itself as a ‘center-left’ movement ‘that is not shying away from criticism, is managing its differences through dialogue, arguments and respect for the other’ in a desperate attempt to not disappear. It is (conveniently) blaming everything that went wrong on the sole Moreno (ignoring that a majority of the party followed Moreno when he broke with Correa and made not much difficulties to approve the pro-business economic turn) who had been expelled from the party he had totally stopped caring about in the last months of his presidency on last 3 March; Moreno however beat them by announcing his disaffiliation the day before.

Too bad that Peña, probably the best candidate they could have run in 2021 (a woman – the only one out of sixteen presidential candidates – with almost credible feminist credentials, a past as an economic migrant to the United States, an experience in child welfare and not the most tainted by her association with the unpopular Moreno administration), has also left in last July.

The new president of MOVER, Patricio Barriga (Peña’s running-mate in last presidential election) has the double disadvantage of having served in both the Correa (as a national secretary for Communication) and the Moreno (as a communication adviser in the national secretariat for policy management) administrations, a nice way to alienate pro- and anti-Correa voters at the same time. Barriga is also a former TV journalist, having notably been employed by the (then) private-owned TC Televisión between 1994 and 2001.

[Sir John Johns]

Pachakutik parliamentary caucus dividing into two rival factions

On 15 December, nine Pachakutik assemblymen (out of twenty-five) have declared themselves ‘in rebellion’ against their parliamentary caucus leader, Rafael Lucero (Chimborazo provincial assemblyman). The group is also critical of the way Guadalupe Llori is presiding the National Assembly and is questioning the agenda of Lucero, deemed as too aligned with the Lasso administration. As expressed by one of the rebellious assemblymen, Mario Ruiz (Imbabura provincial assemblyman): ‘Either we are with workers, farmers, with hauliers, honest entrepreneurs, students and producers, either we are with the bankers, the holders of foreign-debt bonds, with the transnational companies or the political elites having assets in tax havens’.

The nine assemblymen are constituting themselves into a ‘parliamentary group’ still part of the Pachakutik caucus but asserting their ‘total autonomy vis-à-vis the Lasso government’ and following the guidelines of the CONAIE and the social movements. The ‘parliamentary group’ is disavowing the leadership of Lucero and is refusing to be held liable for the past and future votes made in the name of the Pachakutik caucus and party in the current legislature, especially the vote on the tax reform the group is trying to prevent the implementation through a repealing law and an appeal to the Constitutional Court. The vote on the Pandora Papers report has also generated strong disagreement in the caucus with Lucero and Ruiz having a heated discussion during the session it was rejected by the National Assembly.

For his part, Lucero is mentioning the group already attempted to oust him two months ago and is accusing the nine assemblymen of following their own political agenda and having their own electoral interests while accusing them of attempting to impose their ‘decisions without consensus’ and of preparing the next elections by ‘offering candidacies’. The coordinator of Pachakutik is also criticizing the agenda followed by the CONAIE under Iza, accusing it of ‘not working according to the social line they are holding’ and of ‘becoming one more political actor’. Lucero is strongly hinting the indigenous organization is now dedicated to prepare the presidential bid of Iza in the next elections.

The nine rebellious Pachakutik assemblymen are, beside Mario Ruiz,
- Patricia Sánchez (assemblywoman elected on the national list)
- Peter Calo (Cotopaxi provincial assemblyman)
- Darwin Pereira (El Oro provincial assemblyman and a member of the Legislative Administrative Council)
- Fernando Cabascango (assemblyman elected from Rural Quito Electoral District and the chairman of the Constitutional Guarantees Commission)
- Mireya Pazmiño (Bolívar provincial assemblywoman and the chairwoman of the Economic and Tax Framework Commission)
- Salvador Quishpe (assemblyman elected on the national list)
- Joel Abad (Cañar provincial assemblyman)
- Salvador Maita (assemblyman elected by expats in Canada and the US).

None of the nine assemblymen are elected from an Amazonian province (assemblymen from Amazon are accounting for seven out of twenty-five Pachakutik legislators), kind of perpetuating a traditional divide inside the indigenous movement.

Salvador Quishpe, the assemblyman with the most political experience and saw as having a great influence in the caucus, is an interesting case, having been elected a provincial deputy (2003-07) and a prefect (2009-19) of the Amazonian province of Zamora Chinchipe but, belonging to the Saraguro indigenous people (which is originating from southern Sierra and has settled northwestern Zamora Chinchipe in the twentieth century), has more cultural affinities with the indigenous of the highlands, hence why he chaired the Ecuarunari (the CONAIE’s highlands regional affiliate) between 1999 and 2000. His political career is a bit complicated also: he was punished in August 2003 by the Pachakutik leadership following indigenous traditional justice (whipped with nettles and doused with cold water) for not having voted against a wage reform bill proposed by the Gutiérrez administration (which had just broke with Pachakutik following its pro-business and pro-US turn); was a vocal opponent to Rafael Correa and met with Lasso in 2016 to discuss the possibility of making indigenous lawmaker Lourdes Tibán the running-mate of the right-wing leader, a move which arose critics inside the indigenous movement; ran in the August 2020 Pachakutik primaries against Yaku Pérez then withdrew his candidacy and endorsed Pérez against Jaime Vargas and Leonidas Iza’s own attempts to get nominated with the support of the CONAIE (as part of a first feud between the indigenous organization and its political branch); saw in October 2020 his own candidacy for national assemblyman (when occupying the first spot on the national list) challenged by Jaime Vargas; was defending in last May the last-minute deal with CREO making Llori the president of the National Assembly while denying the existence of a programmatic agreement with Lasso’s party and disagreeing with Pérez’s decision to leave Pachakutik and (temporarily) withdrawing from politics.

The Pachakutik coordinator, Marlon Santi, has announced a political council of the party will be summon to analyse the situation and take decisions but even his authority is questioned by the rebel assemblymen.

In the end, as summarized by Primicias, the rebellion of the nine Pachakutik legislators is the last episode of a series of internal feuds and departures that have affected all parliamentary caucuses since the convening of the current legislature only seven months ago and altered the balance of power in the Assembly (with the BAN overtaking Pachakutik as the second largest caucus thanks to defectors from all other caucuses, including two assemblymen elected for the UNES) without actually providing a stable and reliable majority in the house.

[Sir John Johns]

Historical city of Zaruma damaged by illegal mining



Last night, two houses totally collapsed in the historical center of Zaruma (El Oro province) when brutally swallowed by a sinkhole with a diameter of about 20 meters. A third house has also been damaged and so were three streets of the colonial city which had been founded by Spaniards in 1595 and that the Ecuadorian authorities are trying to inscribe on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List since 1998. No deaths nor injuries have been reported but the electrical grid of the city has been damaged with 25% of the households having no electricity. Additionally, some 300 persons, living in houses at risk, have been evacuated.

https://twitter.com/PrimeraPlanaECU/status/1471296095477243906

The governor of El Oro (part of the presidential cabinet and not an elected official unlike the provincial prefect) has been forced to resign in the aftermath of the publication of a video in which, after coming to the disaster site, he replied to a Zaruma inhabitant complaining it is too late for him to come to the city by repeatedly demanding him to shut up.

The occurrence of the sinkhole has been blamed on illegal gold mining, one of the city’s main economic activities since colonial times (giving its name to the El Oro province whose Zaruma was the capital of until 1883) with, according to the 2010 census, 24.1% (2,369 persons) of the active workforce in the Zaruma Canton being employed in mining and quarrying. Gold used to be extracted by a US company from 1897 to 1950 and later by a semi-public company jointly owned by the Zaruma municipal government and former employees of the US company. This latter went bankrupted in 1979 and was liquidated by the Ecuadorian state in 1992. Mining sector in the Zaruma canton as well as in the neighboring Portovelo canton is now mostly dominated by artisanal, small-scale miners, some organized into unrecognized cooperatives. Miners often operate in the informal sector if not in complete illegality with some still exploiting the underground galleries running under the urban core of Zaruma, which is theoretically part of a no-mining zone as decided in 2013 by the Ecuadorian government, which then closed the galleries.

Nevertheless, in September 2017, President Lenín Moreno had to order the suspension of legal mining operations in the vicinity of the no-mining zone and declared a state of emergency shortly after a school, which had already been partly swallowed by a sinkhole in February 2017, had totally collapsed.

Illegal mining however continued as illustrated, for example, by the operation conducted in last September by the army against illegal miners, which led to the arrests of fourteen (including five Venezuelans and one Colombian) and the seizing of firearms, explosives, ammunition and cocaine base paste.

Previously, in August 2019, four miners had been killed by an explosion while working for a company which had been legally permitted to use explosives, which seems to vindicate environmentalist claims about legal mining being as much as problem than illegal mining as the Ecuadorian state appears unable to enforce basic labor and environmental legislation to miners, legal and illegal alike, in a 20,000-inhabitant city and relatively popular touristic destination.

Occurrence of sinkholes is not the environment problem triggered by legal and illegal mining in the Zaruma-Portovelo area: farmers’ organizations of Tumbes (Peru) are suing Ecuador before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights over the pollution by heavy metals of the Puyango River, which serves as a border between Peru and Ecuador.

[warandwar]

CONAIE announced they will be submitting their legislators to an internal accountability process called  "Llaki." In response, Lasso in response: (https://www.pichinchacomunicaciones.com.ec/guillermo-lasso-enfrentaremos-a-leonidas-iza-con-todo-el-poder-del-estado/ translated in another forum)

Lasso went on tv to say that Iza is "an anarchist who hates democracy and institutionality" who "is effective at burning public buildings and promoting the kidnapping journalists and cops"
He also accused Iza of being "a man so violent that he wants to submit some women to 'Justicia Indígena' [placing this in quotes as the phrase 'Justicia Indígena' (Indigenous Justice) carries a specific weight and connotation]" , seemingly in reference to the fact that some of the Pachakutik members of congress being called to the process of accountability are women
Finally "We are going to confront him with the entire power of the state and of public order, so that those who want to interrupt public services and prolong the economic crisis, will end up with their bones in prison"

Essentially "the savages want to beat up their women" and calling for imprisoning his political enemies.

In response, Iza: (https://twitter.com/CONAIE_Ecuador/status/1473500456852803590 translated in another forum)

"I have payed close attention to what the president has said. First off I want to tell the president: I hope you have a merry christmas, may god bless you. The president hopes, in this case, that I go to prison. I respond by wishing him good health. When the president mentions "bones in prison", I imagine he is referring to my death. I respond by wishing him instead life. What the president needs to understand is that we will fight against privatizations, against any imposition by the IMF. We will not stand for the degradation of human capabilities. President of the republic: do not have these fascist attitudes. This simply shows your inability to resolve the problems facing the people of Ecuador. I do not wish you any ill-will. What he needs to know is that in political and ideological terms, the people will never be in agreement with all of the privatizations and everything that you are doing against the people of Ecuador.

And as we have said, and this I also hope you understand: you must know how to keep your word, because up to this point the only thing you have shown is dishonesty. You, with the anger you have shown, are incapable of governing the country. A dialogue filled with lies will never give answers to the people of Ecuador.

With all firmness, with all that it means...-and now the president is threatening to bring down the power of the state on us...- look, with all that it means, we will continue to fight. Stop intervening in the judicial system, since when are you judge and jury and competent to determine that I am responsible for the burning down of the public comptroller's building? Stop being a liar mr. president of the republic"

Nothing but respect for MY PRESIDENT.

[Sir John Johns]

CONAIE announced they will be submitting their legislators to an internal accountability process called  "Llaki." In response, Lasso in response: (https://www.pichinchacomunicaciones.com.ec/guillermo-lasso-enfrentaremos-a-leonidas-iza-con-todo-el-poder-del-estado/ translated in another forum)

Lasso went on tv to say that Iza is "an anarchist who hates democracy and institutionality" who "is effective at burning public buildings and promoting the kidnapping journalists and cops"
He also accused Iza of being "a man so violent that he wants to submit some women to 'Justicia Indígena' [placing this in quotes as the phrase 'Justicia Indígena' (Indigenous Justice) carries a specific weight and connotation]" , seemingly in reference to the fact that some of the Pachakutik members of congress being called to the process of accountability are women
Finally "We are going to confront him with the entire power of the state and of public order, so that those who want to interrupt public services and prolong the economic crisis, will end up with their bones in prison"

Essentially "the savages want to beat up their women" and calling for imprisoning his political enemies.

The inflammatory declarations of President Lasso against Leonidas Iza have been condemned by Ecuador’s Alliance of Organizations for Human Rights which described them as ‘a breach of his duty to respect and guarantee a secure environment for the work of defenders of human rights, of collective rights and nature’.

https://twitter.com/DDHH_Alianza/status/1473748519668400132

‘The violent and contemptuous discourse of Guillermo Lasso stigmatizes the work realized by the social and political leaderships, social and indigenous movements, attacks in a baseless and reckless way Leonidas Iza, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and reduces the resistance processes, decided in a collective and democratic way within organizations, to mere individual actions. By attacking the leadership, obviously, this intends sending an intimidating message for the entire society’.

It seems that Lasso has decided to promote Iza from member of the ‘triumvirate of the conspiracy’ to his main political rival (the parliamentary opposition having apparently decided to commit collective political suicide...). In a way, he is acknowledging the indigenous leader as an independent political actor, having abstained as far as I know to accuse the CONAIE of being manipulated by non-indigenous/foreign actors in contrast with previous presidents who had blamed non-indigenous far-left activists (Rodrigo Borja), the CIA and the US State Department (Correa) or the FARC, Cuba and Venezuela (Moreno) to be behind the indigenous movement. On the other hand, this is also an attempt to revive the mestizo/white urban / indigenous rural ethnic cleavage with the president considering that the massive swing in his favor in Quito (where he gained almost 100,000 votes compared to the 2017 runoff while nationwide losing almost 180,000 votes) during last presidential runoff must be attributed to the memory of the October 2019 protests among urban residents unhappy with the material destruction, the arsons and the clashes between protesters and the police that then happened.

Growing discrepancies inside Pachakutik

Only five of the twenty-five Pachakutik assemblymen attended the governing council of the CONAIE summoned on 21 December by Iza in San Pablo del Lago (Imbabura province) to submit the legislators elected for the party to an ‘act of healing and internal purification’. In a 15-page letter made public shortly before, thirteen Pachakutik legislators (including Guadalupe Llori and the non-indigenous Guayaquil lawyer Ricardo Vanegas) as well as the party’s coordinator, Marlon Santi, criticized the attitude of Iza, calling it ‘wrong, absurd, illegal, arbitrary and illegitimate’ and accusing him of trying to sanction them by applying indigenous justice, without having competence or jurisdiction to do it stating that only indigenous communities have the right to do it. The legislators also stated their refusal to be submit to ‘the abuse of the president of the CONAIE’ and claimed Iza is trying to enter the political arena at the expenses of the Pachakutik assemblymen and to undermine the ‘responsible work’ they have done since seven months (see also Llori’s Twitter thread in which she used the term of justicia indígena).

The Pachakutik caucus is now currently divided into the thirteen anti-Iza legislators led by Llori and Lucero, the eleven pro-Iza legislators in insurgency against Lucero’s leadership and the lonely José Chimbo (provincial assemblyman from Bolívar), who attended the CONAIE council in Imbabura to defend his legislative work and has called for the unity of the indigenous movement.

Iza has announced the thirteen legislators will be once again summoned to an indigenous justice process.

Finding new ways to criminalize social protests

Meanwhile, El Universo is mentioning that a complaint for ‘destruction of cultural heritage’ has been filed by a right-wing lawyer claiming representing a collective of Quito inhabitants against indigenous leaders, including Leonidas Iza and Yaku Pérez, for material damages allegedly committed during last October protests in the capital. For the lawyer, the indigenous leaders should been held accountable for the unpaving of Plaza de Santo Domingo by demonstrators who throw stones at the police and been prosecuted for being ‘the intellectual authors of the crime’.

Basic salary increasing by 6.25%

On 13 December, Lasso, who had campaigned on the promise to increase the unified basic salary (SBU) from the current $400 to $500 in 2025, announced a 6.25% increase ($25) of the SBU with effect from 1 January 2022. The measure hasn’t been received very well by the business sector with the Quito Chamber of Commerce claiming the increase, when taking into account additional contributions, taxes and costs, will be $32.35 for the employers. The president of the said chamber of commerce denounced an increase based not on a technical analysis but on a political one and called it ‘another blow for private sector’.

Nevertheless, the increase of the SBU will only benefit 450,000 workers (accounting for 5.4% of the workforce) as unemployed, underemployed, part-time workers and workers already earning more than the SBU are not concerned by such wage increase. Half of the workforce being employed in informal sector doesn’t help.

A $25 increase of the SBU was a key demand pushed last month by the FUT, one of the main unions but it also demanded it being increased to reach $500 for the end of 2023.

This is the largest increase since 2013 when a $26 increase of the SBU was decided by then-president Rafael Correa.

Strong suspicions the measure actually aimed at demobilizing unions (whose members are employed in formal, and often public, sector) before the passage of the rehashed labor reform promised by Lasso whose first version wasn’t very friendly with employees.

Still, this enables the government to celebrate a $25 increase in SBU as a major social progress and posting this ridiculous video:

https://twitter.com/LassoGuillermo/status/1473080875030126592

What was promised is fulfilled.

The joy of workers over the wage increase to $425 is felt throughout Ecuador as now their families will have more income in their homes. 2022 looks promising.

Mandatory vaccination for Ecuadorian citizens

The Health Ministry has announced on 23 December that COVID-19 vaccination will be mandatory on Ecuadorian soil, arguing of ‘the ongoing epidemic situation, the risks of the new variants, the availability of vaccines and the present scientific evidences’. People with a duly certified medical condition or contraindication will be not however required to get vaccinated. A vaccine pass will be required for people over 12 to enter non-essential public spaces like malls, bars, restaurants, churches, cinemas and theaters.

Ecuador is the first South American country to decide such measure.

[Sir John Johns]

So, it appears that Pierina Correa had released a Christmas songs album some fifteen years ago and she decided ten days ago it would be a good idea to ensure everybody is aware of that fact by distributing a copy of the disk to each legislator in the National Assembly (Abdalá Bucaram already did it in 1996 when he offered copies of his rock ‘n’ roll album to other South American leaders in an international summit):

Merry Christmas.