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

[Sir John Johns]

The arrest of Jorge Glas

The handover in mid-September to the police by an employee of Televisión Satelital (immediately placed under a witness protection program) and close collaborator of Rivera of an USB stick containing  the telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, messages and related data of Ricardo Rivera. The review of such data by the justice revealed that Rivera and Glas communicated via e-mail on at least 184 occasions between 2009 and 2016. The mail correspondence between both men strongly indicated that Rivera played an important role in the management of the strategic sectors, giving his advice on projects and contracts, exchanging with foreign investors and suggesting candidacies for recruitment in the state apparatus. Rivera also exchanged with Tomislav Topic about business projects with the latter also requesting an appointment with Glas and lobbying the then-minister for telecommunications (who also appears in Rivera’s correspondence) to modify an article of a draft law contrary to his business interests. Also discussed was the short-lived controversy of the 2008 university thesis of Glas that broke out in January 2013 when it was discovered that large parts were plagiarized on two other thesis and on the El Rincón del Vago (‘the Lazybones’ corner’) website that published freely and without any verification academic works, supposed or real.

Glas disputed the authenticity of the data stored on the USB stick and questioned its inclusion in the investigation calling the data ‘illegal’ but acknowledged before the justice having exchanged many e-mails with his uncle, seemingly contradicting previous statements about him very rarely discussing with Rivera.

On 2 October, when still the vice president, Jorge Glas, already indicted for illicit association, was placed in preventive detention after the finding of new elements of conviction: the anticipated testimony of Santos and computer data from the Odebrecht company provided by the US Department of Justice.

The trial of Jorge Glas

The Odebrecht trial began on 24 November 2017 with the main defendants being Jorge Glas, Ricardo Rivera, José Rubén Terán and several businessmen, including the owner of Diacelec, as well as the former director of Petroecuador in charge of transportation and a former official of the secretariat for water. Absent indictees included former comptroller-general Carlos Pólit, an Ecuadorian businessman who owned several offshore companies but had fled the country as well as two Venezuelan citizens, the former manager of the PVDSA branch in Ecuador and a former technical manager of the Pacific Refinery.

Among the 41 witnesses called to testify before the Tribunal were Santos, Olga Muentes and Alexis Mera.

Santos testified having a privileged access to Jorge Glas, specifying out of a dozen of countries he had worked only in Ecuador had he enjoyed such privilege, confirmed that Rivera acted as a middleman and was very close to Glas (describing them as ‘Siamese twins’) and detailed the bribes he paid in favor of Glas and Rivera. He also indicated that during meetings with Glas in the vice-president’s office, Glas turned on a radio to cover the sound of his voice and used a tablet to communicate with Santos over the payment of the bribes.

Muentes, a secretary of the vice president in charge of managing his calendar and meetings between 2013 and 2017 who had been previously employed by Odebrecht between 1996 and 2006,  testified that Rivera sporadically called to the vice president’s office and acknowledged having several times seen Santos in the vice presidency building without however being able to go into detail. She also stated that Glas never replied to the calls of Rivera.

Alexis Mera, the almighty legal secretary of the Presidency all along the administration of Correa, confirmed previous statements he had made according to which Glas had conducted every business negotiations with Odebrecht, including its expulsion from Ecuador when the head of the Solidarity Fund to its return in Ecuador when, as minister for strategic sectors, he requested a meeting with Correa and Mera to inform them over the possibility to reach an agreement with the Brazilian company to repair the San Francisco hydroelectric plant. The resumption of the company activities in Ecuador weren’t part of the agreement according to Mera who claimed that ‘we trust what Jorge Glas told us’ before adding he no longer heard of Odebrecht until the publication of the plea agreement of the company by the US Justice Department in December 2016, a quite dubious affirmation as there have been reports in the Ecuadorian press over problems in the construction of projects awarded to the Brazilian company which furthermore experienced serious judicial problems in Brazil since 2015.

Also pretty dubious was the assertion of Mera about Correa not having been aware about the October 2013 awarding by Petroecuador of the contract for the construction of the Pascuales-Cuenca pipeline (an oversize project plagued by numerous defects) to Odebrecht and discovering its existence only in April 2015. Mera and Glas then blamed the contract awarding on Rafael Poveda, the successor of Glas as minister for strategic sectors (2012-15). A version contradicted by Poveda who published shortly thereafter a statement indicating the project was actually approved in 2007, well before he became minister.

Alexis Mera has a background very similar to Jorge Glas, having met Correa in Catholic youth circles, having joined the government without having ever ran for election and being closer to Guayaquil business community than social movements. He had previously served as a judicial adviser to former president and then the PSC mayor of Guayaquil León Febres-Cordero and hold the same job with Gustavo Noboa, a future president of Ecuador, when this one was the human resource manager of the Ingenio San Carlos S.A. private sugar undertaking.

Mera has since been sentenced in 2020 to eight years in jail for bribery in the Sobornos 2012-2016 case.

A request fielded by Glas’ lawyer to hear Rafael Correa in the case was rejected by the judge who argued the testimony of the former president wasn't relevant.

The fourteen-day-long trial concluded on 13 December with Glas being found guilty of illicit association and sentenced to six years in jail. The same sentence was pronounced for Rivera, the owner of Diacelec, the former director of Petroecuador and the official of the secretariat for water.

On 4 January 2018, it was noted by the Moreno administration that Jorge Glas, who had refused to give his resignation, had been in preventive jail since over 90 days and that his temporal absence should be re-characterized as a permanent absence making him unable to fulfill his duties. Hence, Moreno terminated the term of office of Glas and sent a list of three names to the National Assembly to replace him as vice president of Ecuador. The National Court of Justice rejected the appeal filed by Glas and confirmed his sentence to jail.



The line that has always been defended by Correa and his allies is that Glas is completely innocent of any corruption charges and that he is the victim of ‘political persecution’ and ‘lawfare’, with parallels drawn with Lula, a Latin American left-wing leader also prosecuted in a case related to Odebrecht bribery. Criticisms have been addressed over alleged judicial irregularities, the rapidity of the trial, the conviction based on array of presumptions and possibly unreliable testimonies (Santos later made a testimony also involving Correa in the case) instead of strong evidences, and over politicization and selective prosecutions of Ecuadorian politicians accused of corruption (especially President Lenín Moreno accused of having received kickbacks from Sinohydro, the Chinese company in charge of the construction of the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, with the bribe money being transferred to the INA offshore company registered in 2012 in Belize by Edwin Moreno, one of the brothers of Lenín; the case has never been formally prosecuted and Moreno is now out of Ecuador, so...). The context in which the trial took place, in the middle of Moreno’s race against the clock to remove partisans of his predecessor from key positions in the state apparatus also didn’t help dispelling suspicions of the whole thing being a politically-motivated case.

Yet, there have been a bit too much of ‘coincidences’ and facts not supporting the innocence of Glas (why was his uncle part of delegations to China and why had he met the regional director of Odebrecht, apparently on a regular basis, why having no official duties?). One can ask also how the coordinating minister for strategic sectors turn vice president could be unaware of the such massive corruption entrenched in the sectors he had the supervision (oil, electricity, public works) as exposed as early as the latest years of the Correa presidency. And one can also raise the fact that it was  Glas and the then-finance minister, Patricio Rivera who signed in 2010 with China the financial agreement for the construction of Coca Codo Sinclair, in spite of strong criticisms from both experts and opposition politicians. His own uncle owned offshore companies to receive bribes, the whole leadership of Petroecuador owned offshore companies to receive bribes, Lenín Moreno owned offshore companies to receive bribes, the comptroller-general owned offshore companies to receive bribes but we are supposed to believe that Glas saw nothing.


However, the biggest problem that contradicted the opinion about Glas being innocent (a position now even harder to advocate since the Código Vidrio leaked audio) is the massive failure that the policy he was in charge (the change of the productive matrix) has turned out to be. A good share of the mega-projects launched by President Correa, and for which Glas had the supervision, have turned into disasters plagued by a combination of delays, cost overruns, overprices, legal and financial irregularities, change of contractors, awarding of contracts to shady or inexperienced contractors, structural deflects and design flaws and cascades of unplanned ‘complementary contracts’ that further increasing the costs of construction. The former president, his former vice president and their associates are struggling to provide convincing explanations to demonstrate they have no responsability in such fiasco.

[Sir John Johns]

The troubles with large-scale works in oil sector


The never-ending rehabilitation of the Esmeraldas Refinery

The upgrade of the Esmeraldas State Refinery, the main oil refinery of the country built in the 1970s was started in 2008 and had cost by April 2020 over $2.300 million ($2.305 million according to Petroecuador, $2.311 million according to the comptroller-general’s office which questioned the estimates of the state oil company) while still being largely incomplete and having failed to address most issues faced by the aging, obsolete and polluting refinery.

The estimated cost at the start of the project was $127 million with the cost explosion being explained by an absence of planning, defective equipment, a cascade of contractors and subcontractors and, obviously, corruption as two of the men in charge of the project (the aforementioned Álex Bravo and Carlos ‘Capaya’ Pareja Yannuzzelli) having been sentenced for corruption.

Among the about thirty companies having been awarded contracts over the years on the project are appearing the South Korean SK Engineering and Construction (accused of having paid a $1.4 million kickback to Álex Bravo), the Australian WorleyParsons (which subcontracted the inspection works to Grupo Azul, the company of William Phillips, a friend of Rafael Correa and the husband of an adviser of the former president, who has been since sentenced in the Bribes 2012-2016 case; the name of Phillips, currently on the run is also appearing in the Pandora Papers), the KBC Advanced Technologies (a company registered in Delaware but headquartered in England which charged $149 million a ‘plan of best practices’ initially estimated at $48.3 million), Galileo Energy (an Ecuadorian company which had been sued by France's Veolia for fraudulently passing off as one of its subsidiaries and whose owner has been since sentenced by the New York justice for conspiracy to defraud the US government in relation with the Petroecuador bribery case) and MMR Group (a company registered in Louisiana whose then legal agent, a Colombian national barred from receiving public contracts in Venezuela for non-fulfillment, was arrested in Panama in 2016 over accusations of money transfer to an offshore company of Álex Bravo).

And, in spite of all the money spent on the project, the Esmeraldas refinery is still facing a lot of malfunctions, the latest on date being a report from Petroecuador on its obsolete fire prevention system, almost unchanged since 1975.


The non-existing refinery that costed $1,500 million

The Eloy Alfaro Pacific Refinery, a project located in El Aromo (Manta canton, Manabí), whose first stone was laid in July 2008 in the presence of Hugo Chávez under the motto ‘your oil in the best hands’. The construction of the refinery, an Ecuadorian-Venezuelan joint project, was supposed to ensure the energetic sovereignty of Ecuador and reinforced South American cooperation and economic integration. By 2017, however, after numerous delays, the construction of what Chávez once labeled as a ‘tremendous refinery’ had to be suspended due to lack of financing, the Venezuelan PVDSA (which owned 49% of the refinery company shares against 50% for Petroecuador) being unable to meet its financial obligations and the Ecuadorian government failing to convince other investors to revive the project.

In the meantime, some $1.531 million had still been spent in land-leveling operations of a 540 hectares (1,334 acres) plot, the construction of an aqueduct and the building of a construction camp, offices and access roads. The usual suspects (Odebrecht, SK and WorleyParsons) have been awarded contracts for the ill-fated construction.

An external audit commissioned by the Moreno administration revealed in 2019 that $152 million have been wasted in unjustified additional costs and disclosed various problems with the works accomplished by Odebrecht from the steel of the aqueduct being invoiced at a value 2.3 times higher than the market prices to the failure of the technical studies to detect the presence of rock in the plot, occasioning a $35 million extra costs to remove said rock.

The only work of any use, the aqueduct that is supplying water to about 200,000 persons, is now deteriorating as the government is struggling to maintain it. Add to that the seventeen lawsuits filed (fourteen still pending) against the refinery company by former contractors like Odebrecht, SK and WorleyParsons, the environmental damages occasioned by the razing of valuable forests in the Pacoche wildlife refuge with a possible local climatic impact (a reduction in drizzle phenomenon and increasing drought have been reported), the use of the abandoned site by drug traffickers as a clandestine land aircraft and the 2020 arson of the working camp, possibly by locals opposed to the government plans to use it to house COVID-19 patients, and you have a quite clear picture on how what has been a flagship project of the Citizens Revolution has turned into an unmitigated disaster.

https://twitter.com/eluniversocom/status/1392961612840046595



The rusting Monteverde LPG terminal

The construction of the Monteverde Maritime Terminal Project, located in Santa Elena province was initiated in 2007. The project was designed to store and transport liquefied petroleum gas for a construction cost estimated at $263 million (against a $97 million first estimate when the project was bid in early 2007 to several companies in a process suspended shortly afterward). The construction contract was awarded without tendering process to a ‘strategic alliance’ of two public companies, Petroecuador and the Flopec (Ecuadorian Tanker Fleet Public Company), the latter being part of the Ecuadorian Navy and having no experience in construction nor financial resources of its own.

Intended to be completed in 2011, the project was ultimately inaugurated in June 2014 for a final $570 million cost (more than twice the planned cost and almost six time the 2007 first estimate) according to the estimates of Fernando Villavicencio. The overprices were notably due to changes in subcontractors (a first one was linked to Fabricio Correa, a second one registered in Thailand hadn’t the required economic resources) and feuds between the two partners, Petroecuador and Flopec, against a backdrop of infighting between the military (who lost the leadership of Petroecuador in 2011) and the civilians. The project was also started without environment license nor studies of its impact on humpback whales populations transiting in the sector and its economic sustainability was questioned at a time when the Ecuadorian government pushed hard for a switch from liquefied gas to electricity in domestic energy consumption.

The 2019 UNDP-sponsored audit of the Monteverde terminal found somewhat different figures than Villavicencio in 2014 but still unearthed a 76.4% overprice (from $210 million when the contract was awarded to $377 million) and concluded it doesn’t respected international standards, is oversize and underused. Notably, the pier is 483 meters too much long and 10 meters too deep and have proportions comparable to the Rotterdam pier which had been conceived to receive larger ships. There is also no adequate cathodic protection to protect the bridge and the dock platform against corrosion.

In December 2019, the comptroller-general’s office reported a corrosion of the piles that had caused a 60% thickness loss comparable to a standard pier after 25 years of service life while the pier was only used since less than six years. It also indicated that tanks were rusting prematurely due to lack of maintenance provoked by administrative confusion, understaffing and improvisation in the operation of the terminal.



The collapsing pipeline

Another white elephant in oil sector has been the 215-kilometer-long Pascuales-Cuenca pipeline whose construction contract was awarded in October 2013 by then-general manager of Petroecuador Marco Calvopiña to Odebrecht. The technical commission had then unanimously considered that the Brazilian company, having obtaining a perfect score of 100 out of 100 points, was proposing the project with ‘the lowest cost’.

In May 2017, few months after the inauguration (with a fifteen months delay), Petroecuador had already filed a complaint against Caminosca, the private civil engineering company that realized the studies for the project, over alleged underestimations of the final costs of the pipeline. Indeed, in June 2017, the cost of the completed pipeline was estimated at $612 million, that is $242 million more than the price Odebrecht had been awarded the contract and $340 million more than the initial estimated price.

Worse, for such inflated price had been delivered a crumbling pipeline plagued by countless defects and built on an unstable ground. In June 2018, the access road to the pipeline partly collapsed while the pipeline operated at that time at only one third of its capacity. In January 2020, Petroecuador employees had to plug the numerous cracks appearing in the infrastructure with hot tar. In June 2021, the Comptroller-General’s Office issued a report estimating that Petroecuador had already spent $90 million ($70.7 million of which considered as unjustified by the agency) to salvage the pipeline without providing adequate solutions to the defects and establishing the existence of ‘a high risk of total collapse’ of the public work.

https://twitter.com/EcuavisaInforma/status/1216786265053581320

Problems were blamed by the agency on Odebrecht that allegedly began the construction without conducting studies on the geological conditions or the supporting capacity of the foundations. A version denied by the Brazilian company. Petroecuador and Odebrecht have sued one each other: the first one for the construction deflects that are requiring further expenses and the second one for the unilateral termination of its contract by the Ecuadorian government in October 2017. The lawsuit of Odebrecht has been however dismissed in December 2021.



The collapsing natural gas liquefaction plant

Same as with the Bajo Alto natural gas liquefaction plant built in El Guabo (El Oro) by the Ros Roca Spanish company for a cost of $49.2 million. The plant, inaugurated in November 2011, met so much problems that, in spite of maintenance operations charged $10.6 additional million by Ros Roca, it had to suspended its activities for a year, starting from December 2014.

In February 2015, while supposed being busy repairing the plant, the staff of Ros Roca abruptly decamped and by January 2016 both the owner and the legal representative of the company were seek by the Ecuadorian justice. In June 2016, a report commissioned by Petroecuador established that the combined sum spent to repair the plant and the financial losses due to the paralysis of the plant amounted for $46.2 million, that is, practically the price of the construction. The company that estimated the damages and the losses was... WorleyParsons (irregularities in the duties performed by WorleyParsons were detected in December 2015, notably a $528,000 salary paid to an inspector in charge of inspecting works that were never executed) while Ros Roca was reported to have by then changed name and declared insolvency.

https://twitter.com/eluniversocom/status/1085620249536462848

By January 2019, 60% of the four hectares site were collapsing with a land subsidence up to 60 to 70 cm in parts of the liquefaction and nitrogen plants. The international audit conducted few weeks before had concluded the initial design of the plant was defective and ignored the geological characteristics of the soil. As a result, the electricity supply didn’t worked while the piled-up non-functioning diesel generators were awaiting in the so-called ‘cemetery’ the result of a legal dispute to be disposed. By then $72.5 million had been spent on the building and repairing of the plant with additional $19.1 million needed to complete its rehabilitation.



Some $2.450 million cost overrun for the five flagship projects in oil sector

In August 2017, President Moreno commissioned an audit of these five projects in oil sector. The audit was conducted by two European and one US companies and sponsored by the UNDP and in its findings made public by Moreno in January 2019 the figure of $2,450 million cost overrun for the five projects was advanced. A record 1.156%% cost overrun was estimated for the electric system of the Esmeraldas Refinery with the rehabilitation process having a 296% cost overrun for a refinery only working at 80% of its capacity; a 150% cost overrun for the Pascuales-Cuenca pipeline only working at 50% of its capacity; a 76% cost overrun for the Monteverde terminal; a 190% cost overrun for the Bajo Alto plant working at only 50% of its capacity; and a 23% cost overrun for what has been built of the Pacific Refinery.

The audit also estimated that $650 million would be needed to repair the four completed projects.

Criticisms have been addressed against the audit by Correístas for being politically motivated, being conducted by European and North American firms and for worsening the picture in order to prepare the ground for the privatization of the projects. While the Moreno administration indeed announced its intent to grant in concession various public works, notably the Esmeraldas Refinery, the Pacific Refinery and the Monteverde terminal as well as several hydroelectric plans, no progress in this direction has been made since and no concession contracts have been signed. It seems that investors are in no hurry to put money in works plagued by technical problems and mired in a tangle of lawsuits with possibly some irregularities yet to be discovered, all of this in a context of economic downturn and uncertainty over the future of oil sector and in a country suffering from high political instability, defective legal environment and widespread corruption in politics, administration and justice.

Moreno also announced in January 2019 a similar audit of other works completed by the Citizen Revolution, especially the hydroelectric plants and the health sector, but nothing came out of it. Some would say that is because Moreno was himself involved in corruption cases notably related to hydroelectricity (the Coca Codo Sinclair in which he apparently successfully lobbied Correa to confirm the contract with Sinohydro the president was about to cancel about Chinese exaggerated demands) and  hospitals (as exposed in 2020 by press revelations on the distribution of posts and contracts in hospitals organized by Moreno’s minister of government, María Paula Romo).

[Sir John Johns]

The troubles in the hydroelectric sector

I have already alluded to the problems encountered in the construction of hydroelectric plants, when discussing few posts above the still uncompleted Toachi Pilatón plant and mentioning the regressive erosion phenomenon which is jeopardizing the operation of the Coca Codo Sinclair plant. The construction of such plants, which was aiming at providing energy sovereignty to Ecuador, was also largely supervised by Jorge Glas. And his record isn’t particularly brilliant as, by 2018, out of the eight hydroelectric plants commissioned by the Correa administration only three were actually functioning (Manduriacu, Sopladora and Coca Coda Sinclair). Two (Delsitanisagua and Minas San Francisco) were subsequently completed, but with delays, while three are still not completed (Mazar-Dudas, Toachi Pilatón) if not abandoned (Quijos). The future of the flagship plant of Coca Codo Sinclair, which is providing alone 30% of the electricity consumed in Ecuador, is remaining very uncertain in spite of the money the government is spending to salvage it.

In the detail:

The Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant

Probably the biggest scandal of the Correa administration with disastrous human, environmental and economic consequences has been the construction of the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant. A pipedream project dating back from the 1970s, the plan for building a hydroelectric plant on the Coca river, at the border of the Amazonian provinces of Napo and Sucumbíos, was revived by President Correa in 2008 with the aim to cover the growing electricity needs of Ecuador.

Criticisms arose even before the works began, notably over the design of the plant, elaborated according to technical studies dating back from 1992 and planned for a two 430 megawatts generation units when the 2008 plan provided the construction of ten 150 megawatts generation units (the final plan would provided for eight 187.5 megawatts generation units). In addition to the feasibility of the plant was questioned the environmental impact of such infrastructure: in a 2010 article of Mongabay, a spokesman of the Napo River Foundation is warning the Ecuadorian government over the consequence of the construction of a hydroelectric plant dam on the flow of the Coca River and on the neighboring San Rafael 150-meter waterfall the tallest one of the country and a major tourist hotspot located at nine kilometers from the planned project: ‘There is no doubt in my mind that when they build the diversion structure with the capacity to take over 200 cubic meters per second from the river channel, and the river only has about half of that, they will take the entire river and leave the San Rafael Falls with virtually no water’.

Nevertheless, the project was green-lighted and firstly awarded to a mixed company owned by the Ecuadorian Termopichincha (later absorbed by CELEC, the Electric Corporation Ecuador) and the Argentinian state-owned ENARSA, a choice criticized by opposition assemblyman León Roldós who denounced the awarding of the contract without a tender process to ENARSA, a quite recently created company with no experience in the construction of hydroelectric works. The selection of ENARSA was still defended by Glas and Alecksey Mosquera, the then-minister for electricity, but in September 2009, the Argentinian company withdrew from the project after having barely contributed financially to it.

An agreement was subsequently concluded with China in July 2010 providing the plant would be built by Sinohydro with $1.682 million out of the $1.979 million estimated cost being financed by a loan at 6.9% from the Chinese Export-Import Bank (Eximbank).

The construction of the plant was plagued by accusations of labor abuse from the Chinese management (insufficient food, non-payment of overtime, absence of protective equipment, violations of the labor code and reports of sexual harassment against feminine staff) leading to a strike of workers in November 2012. On July 2012, two workers (one Ecuadorian and one Chinese) were killed in a bus accident blamed on the disrepair of the vehicles supplied by a provider of the plant company while in December 2014 thirteen workers (ten Ecuadorians and three Chinese) were killed and twelve injured when a tunnel of the plant collapsed due to water infiltration.

The plant was inaugurated with pomp on 18 November 2016 by Rafael Correa and Xi Jinping, more than one year after the planned starting of the plant operation. The final cost of the project was estimated at $2,245 million, up from the $1.979 million planned when the contract was awarded to Sinohydro and from the $1.158 million calculated in 2007 when the project was launched.

By July 2018, that is one year and seven months after the plant had started operations, some 4,000 cracks and microcracks had been detected in the infrastructure, the consequence of the installation in the powerhouse of non-certified water distributors produced in China that turned out defective and can’t adequately resist the pressure of the water. The first cracks were detected even before the completion of the plant, in 2014. A report published few months thereafter reevaluated the number of cracks to 7,648 but, in spite of repairs realized in 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2021, the cracks are still reappearing. A report from the last month is recommending to entirely rebuild the powerhouse, an operation that would cost over $1.000 million according to a previous report, but is considered as ‘the safest and most definitive’ solution, as the defective distributors are putting the whole plant at risk and are constituting a threat for the lives of the staff. CELEC has requested an international arbitration with Sinhydro over the issue of defective distributors while problems with the valves regulating the circulation of water have been since additionally detected.

And as it isn’t enough, the Coca Codo Sinclair plant is facing another threat: the phenomenon of regressive erosion that is affecting the banks of the Coca River and its tributaries and *may* be the consequence of the construction of the hydroelectric plant (there is no scientific consensus on the matter).

Sadly, as some environmentalist groups had warned in 2010, the iconic San Rafael waterfall disappeared on 2 February 2020, the consequence of a sinkhole that altered the course of the Coca River

https://twitter.com/tomebamba/status/1224435920813690886

One year later, on 25 February 2021, the natural bridge constituted by the disappearance of the waterfall collapsed into the Coca River.

https://twitter.com/Riesgos_Ec/status/1364921744692281344

Staff of the Cayambe National Park reported that the arch through which the Coca River flowed has collapsed, causing the total damming of the river. It has been suggested as measure to abandon the facilities of the San Rafael monitoring point and relocate the staff to another place.

The erosion is now moving upriver, having provoked in April 2020 the rupture of two pipelines (leading a major oil spill in the middle of the coronavirus crisis) and in August 2020 the collapse of a portion of the Baeza-Lago Agrio road. To mitigate the effects of the erosion and slow its progression before it reach the Coca Codo Sinclair plant, CELEC has built six temporary dykes while planning to construct concrete panels (at a cost estimated to $100 million) and contemplating relocating the water catchment works upriver. Nevertheless, in last December, when a segment of the Quito-Lago Agrio road also collapsed, the erosion has advanced until 9.2 kilometers from the water catchment works with not much durable solutions nor money to address a phenomenon described as unpredictable, irrecoverable and irreversible.



The Sopladora hydroelectric plant

The Sopladora hydroelectric plant, located on the boundary between Azuay and Morona Santiago provinces, was inaugurated in 2016 after five years of construction that cost $755 million, in major part financed by a credit from China’s Eximbank. Seven workers died while working on the building site including four Chinese technicians killed in an explosion in April 2014.

The consortium in charge of the construction received in February 2018 fines worth $305 million over unfinished works in the plant and the unwillingness of the consortium to complete or fix the works deemed as incomplete or defective.

When inaugurating the plant in 2016, Correa announced the concession to private sector of Sopladora for a 30-year period as a way for the government to obtain liquidity; six years later, the process is still pending.


The ghost Quijos hydroelectric plant

The construction of a hydroelectric plant in Quijos (Napo), estimated at $138 million, was awarded to the China National Electric Engineering Company (CNEEC) and began in January 2012. However, the project was suspended in January 2016, when completed at only 46%, as the contract with the CNEEC was canceled over non-compliance with technical and quality standards and use of outdated excavation methods and machinery that considerably delayed the construction of the project which is considered as relatively small and unambitious.

By 2018, the construction site was abandoned and invaded by vegetation but the restarting of the project has been announced on May 2021, providing a new contractor is found to complete it.


The uncompleted Mazar-Dudas plant

Also awarded to the CNEEC was the construction of the Mazar-Dudas hydroelectric plant in the Cañar province whose realization was also suspended on January 2016, when completed at 86%. Four Ecuadorian workers perished in March 2015 while working on the project, buried by a landslide provoked by drilling operations. Only one generation unit out of three is currently operating, the two other still waiting to be completed.


The Manduriacu hydroelectric plant

The construction of the Manduriacu hydroelectric plant was awarded in December 2011 to Odebrecht which completed it on March 2015. However, seven months later, the National Anti-corruption Commission, constituted by social organizations and members of the civil society, claimed that the final cost of the project had been inflated by 82% (from a $125 million initial estimated cost to a final cost of $227 million) due to the signatures of three additional contracts the commission considered as unnecessary. It also denounced the carrying out of inaccurate feasibility studies by Caminosca and indicated that the construction of the plant had been launched without an environmental license.

The attorney general Galo Chiriboga filed the complaint of the commission but the case was reopened in January 2019 after the former director of Odebrecht in Ecuador, José Santos, had testified the payment of bribes in relation with Manduriacu. It however seems to remain pending.

The plant is regularly accused of contaminating the drinking water system of the downstream Esmeraldas province and killing the fishes and the crustaceans of the Guayllabamba and Esmeraldas rivers due to discharges of sediments. A 2020 report of the comptroller-general’s office has pointed out the lack of wastewater treatment plants in Manduriacu, deficiencies in the monitoring of the water quality and the absence of policies to mitigate the discharge of waster water directly in the Guayallabamba River each time the plant’s reservoir is cleaned.



So, these were the problems of corruption, technical defects, delays and mismanagement of public funds that have plagued the sole oil and hydroelectricity sectors under Correa and for whom Glas should be logically accountable for.

There have been also corruption scandals in other sectors like:

* the Jumandy Airport in Tena (Napo, a project actually launched by Lucio Gutiérrez in his political home turf) built by Odebrecht for about $48 million but is now only used by the army, flying schools and private flights as there are not enough passengers (only 1,530 for 2016) for a regular airline to be viable

* the Yachay City of Knowledge, supposed to become the South American Silicon Valley and being modeled after the South Korean Incheon Free Economic Zone, that has never took off due to a poor geographic location (in the middle of nowhere, far away from Quito and Guayaquil). The Ecuadorian government ridiculed itself in February 2017 when its announcement Tesla would produced electric cars in Yachay was denied by the company. The only functioning part of the City of Knowledge is the Yachay University, which opened in 2014 but has struggled with excessive bureaucracy, administrative difficulties, budgetary cuts under Moreno and an overpaid and erratic leadership (eight rectors and ten heads of the department for human talent between 2014 and 2020).

* the Millenium Education Units (UEM), dubbed as ‘white elephants’ by Lenín Moreno... in October 2016 during a campaign meeting (before he had to backtracked when President Correa publicly defended once again what was one of his pet projects). The building of these large and modern schools were intended to replace many old-fashioned small community schools but led to mixed results due to an ignorance of local particularities (a same architectural design that disregards geographical and cultural differences and a location forcing children in some places like the Amazon or the central highlands to travel up to two hours to reach the new UEM), cost overruns, building defects and considerable delays in their construction. The project has been since stopped by Moreno who has reversed the closure of community schools.

* and the latest one on record, the Pablo Arturo Suárez Hospital in Quito which is collapsing just seven years after its opening, hence further complicating the public health situation in the capital characterized by shortage in medicines and medical equipment, the consequence of budgetary cuts and corruption.



Plan V has set up a website called the Museum of Corruption specifically dedicated to corruption scandals under the Correa administration while the  Anticorruption Observatory website is presenting with lot of details and chronology some of the most emblematic corruption cases of the three last decades from the Flores y Miel case which involved relatives of President Sixto Durán-Ballén to the avalanche of corruption cases related to the COVID-19 oubreak.



Having said this, it is still doubtless that none of Correa’s main competitors (Álvaro Noboa, Lucio and Gilmar Gutiérrez or probably even Guillermo Lasso or León Roldós) would have achieved particularly better results in term of corruption as cronyism, nepotism, clientelism and patrimonialism are so deeply entrenched in Ecuadorian politics and as the Ecuador state is remaining largely inefficient. The two only major differences between the Correa administration and its democratically elected predecessors and successors have been: 1/ an effective undermining of opposition medias and politicians making even more difficult the transparency and accountability of the state 2/ the unprecedented inflow of revenues coming from the commodities boom that multiplied opportunities for corruption and increased the amount of diverted money.

[Sir John Johns]

Back to current political news:

The legislative crisis is now coupled with a judicial crisis as the dispute between the National Court of Justice (CNJ, the highest justice court in Ecuador) and the Council of Judicature (CJ, the administrative body in charge of selecting, appointing, evaluating and sanctioning officials of the judicial branch) has culminated on 20 May when the CJ has decided to suspend for 90 days the president of the CNJ, Iván Saquicela, in office since February 2021. The suspension of Saquicela has been motivated by the CJ on the grounds of ‘presumed gross negligence’ in relation with two judicial (and highly political) cases: delays in the processing of the extradition request of Rafael Correa (that have now few chances to happen as the Belgian government has awarded the status of political refugee to the former president, a decision made public on 15 April, just few days before the CNJ decided to formally start the proceedings for an extradition request it could have launched as early as August 2021) as well as in the examination of a request to recuse a judge filed by the current jailed former human rights ombudsman Freddy Carrión.

As recounted by this article of GK, the conflict between the CJ and the CNJ dated back from last February when the then-president of the CJ resigned to protest over a decision of the Constitutional Court withdrawing her the right to decide alone the suspension of judicial officers and requiring instead a mandatory decision of the CJ plenary (made up of five members). As a consequence, Fausto Murillo, one of the members of the CJ, was designated as the new head of the institution on a temporary basis, pending the designation of a new president on a permanent basis by the CPCCS. Murillo had previously been suspended from the CJ in April 2021 after a decision of the CPCCS (headed by Sofía Almeida who has been since removed from the presidency in last February and succeeded by Hernán Ulloa, considered as being pro-Lasso) over an alleged legal impediment. The decision (opposed by Ulloa) was later reversed by a provincial court that reinstated Murillo as a member of the CJ.

On 22 February, Saquicela has sent to the CPCCS the official three-name list of candidates to be selected as the next CNJ appointee in the CJ who would also became the next permanent president of the CJ. Nevertheless, after eighty days, taking note of the lack of progress in the designation process and the apparent unwillingness of the CPCCS and its president, Ulloa, to appoint a candidate among the list sent by Saquicela, this latter decided to withdraw the list and to publicly denounced a possible takeover of the judicial institutions and criticized the attitude of the CPCCS he labeled as unconstitutional (the CJ is constitutionally supposed to be presided by the CNJ appointee while Murillo has been appointed by the National Assembly).

It is in this context that the CJ has decided to suspend Saquicela, a decision allegedly unrelated to the ongoing conflict between the president of the CNJ and Murillo. However, the subsequent removal from office as head of a provincial branch of the CJ of the top candidate presented by Saquicela on his three-name list as well as the opening on an investigation by the CJ on provincial judges who had expressed support for Saquicela have made little to dispel suspicions over an attempt takeover of the judicial institutions by the administration of President Lasso who has previously publicly criticized Saquicela (well at least, this seems to be the most widely accepted version but apparently nobody is understanding what is really happening).

Things have became even more insane when the lawyer who filed the complaint against Saquicela in the extradition case of Correa unexpectedly withdrew it on 27 May... only to filed the day thereafter a lawsuit against Saquicela over allegations the suspended president of the CNJ had pressured him to withdraw his complaint for gross negligence. So now, in addition to face an administrative proceeding, Saquicela is also investigated in a criminal case that could finish convincing his fellow CNJ members to remove him from office.

[Sir John Johns]

After a bit more than one year in office and after about five months of political and judicial battle, Guadalupe Llori has been removed from the presidency of the National Assembly. 81 out of 82  assemblymen present at the time of the vote approved the report of the ad hoc commission recommending the removal of Llori for breach of duty. The majority which voted to remove Llori has been constituted by the UNES-PSC alliance joined by dissidents from Pachakutik and the ID as well as independents.

Presidential adviser Diego Ordóñez has reacted by warning about a first step of the ‘social correísta majority’ to control of the Assembly, to continue with the project of taking control of the CPCCS and high offices of controls and committees’.

Consequently, the first vice president, Virgilio Saquicela (elected for the minor Democracia Sí party and who seated in the pro-government BAN caucus until last April) is becoming the new president of the National Assembly until the completion of the term Llori and the ongoing CAL have been elected for, which is May 2023 (when a new CAL should be elected, a new opportunity for political horsetrading, shady agreements and last-minute treason I guess). Note that since last week, the second vice president of the National Assembly, Yeseña Guamaní (ID), who had succeeded to Bella Jiménez (impeached for corruption in last October), is also facing a process for her removal from office also based on alleged breach of duty. Changes in the composition of the parliamentary commissions aren’t to be discarded according to pundits.

https://twitter.com/susanamorg/status/1531832344218312704

Of Guadalupe Llori, the only (fatal) legacy to remember will be her gambit to enable the approval of Guillermo Lasso’s law for abortion in case of rape.

Llori will be regretted by few but with the National Assembly now at the hands of the UNES-PSC alliance, the government will struggle to its agenda passed (not that it managed to get much passed under Llori) unless it manages to reach some unholy agreement that will further damaging its reputation and the one of the Ecuadorian political class as a whole.

[Sir John Johns]

Opinion polls conducted for the first year in office of Guillermo Lasso are predictably horrendous for the president as well as for the National Assembly.

https://twitter.com/PerfilesOpinion/status/1529129961453395970

According to Perfiles de Opinión, in last April:

* only 8.2% of Ecuadorians felt the country was on the right track, down from 53.5% in May 2021
* 21.1% felt Ecuador was democratically governed, down from 48.2% in May 2021
* the credibility of President Lasso was at 21.4%, down from 68.3% in May 2021, so a collapse of 47 percentage points in one year
* the approval of the government was at 30.8%, down from 74.0% in May 2021
* the approval of the vice president Borrero, who is practically invisible, has also collapsed from 66.9% in May 2021 to 25.3% in April 2022 in spite of being in charge of one of the few (if not the only) successful policies of the Lasso administration: the vaccination plan.

https://twitter.com/cedatos/status/1530157160444960769

https://twitter.com/cedatos/status/1530240018509443073

https://twitter.com/cedatos/status/1530519400868204544



Same thing for Cedatos, a polling company considered as more friendly to CREO, which found that the main problems in the country are:

* insecurity/delinquency/violence/problems in jail and drug trafficking (32.5%, up from 3.2% in May 2021)
* economic situation/poverty/economic crisis (28.7%, similar to the 30.0% in May 2021)
* unemployment/underemployment/lack of employment (24.1%, down from 33.4% in May 2021).

Coronavirus crisis is now considered as a major problem by only 2.7% of respondents, down from 19.9% in May 2021.

Lasso’s approvals are now at 38.5%, down from 70.6% in July 2021 and the credibility of his word at 35.0% against 63.1% in July 2021.

Still better than the single-digit approvals of the National Assembly (8.6%), down from 42.1% in July 2021, while the credibility of the word of the assemblymen are at 5.9%, down from 21.0%.

https://twitter.com/cedatos/status/1531244359957499904

The best of the Lasso government:
* vaccination plan (88.0%)
* increase of the basic wages from $400 to $425 a month (57.1%)
* repatriation from Ukraine of the Ecuadorian students (52.1%)
* 1% credit for agriculture at a 30-year term (44.0%)

The worst:
* creation of jobs (56.0%)
* control of delinquency and drug trafficking with police and the armed forces (51.8%)
* attention to victims in risk situations (floods, inundations, etc) (48.1%)
* economic reactivation (48.0%)
* fight against malnutrition (45.1%)

[Sir John Johns]

The Citizen Revolution party is currently at the center of a particularly nasty (and potentially destructive) scandal involving one of its most influential assemblymen, Ronny Aleaga, who must now defended himself from accusation of ties with corruption schemes in the public hospitals and drug gangs.


The photo that is currently shaking Ecuadorian politics

The case has been brought to light few days after the recent arrest of Leandro Norero, a prominent drug gang leader, when Fernando Villavicencio timely leaked photos of a party in a Miami villa attended by Aleaga as well as a fugitive businessman prosecuted in a prominent hospital corruption case. Said businessman is also strongly suspected of being a testaferro (front man) of Norero and having laundering money coming from drug trafficking. The past of Aleaga as a member of the Latin Kings urban gang isn’t helping him and is relentlessly exploited by supporters of the Lasso administration to disseminate the narrative that Correísmo is in bed with the criminal underworld.

After several days of complete silence from the RC, Rafael Correa has been forced to speak out to demand Aleaga to explain himself, a strong indication on how embarrassing the photos of the Miami party are for the RC.

The arrest of Leandro Norero

On 25 May, during a police raid in three coastal provinces (Guayas, Manabí, Santa Elena), seven persons were arrested and charged with asset laundering and were seized gold bullion, about fifty luxury watches, jewelry, firearms as well as $6.4 million in cash.

Among the persons arrested were Leandro Norero, aka El Patrón (‘The Boss’), a discreet but powerful drug trafficker who, after having been a member of the Los Ñetas, is said to have participated in the creation of another gang, the Los Chone Killers. Norero was seek by the Peruvian justice for drug trafficking but evaded prosecution when his lawyer presented a fake death certificate to Peruvian authorities in 2020, leading to the extinguishment of the proceedings.

Norero is suspected to be one of the main financial supporters and money launderers of the Los Lobos, Los Tiguerones and Los Chone Killers, three gangs said to be tied to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. He is also suspected of being engaged into a deadly feud with the rival Los Choneros gang, connected to the Sinaloa Cartel. According to the police, Norero’s organization is shipping from Guayaquil about 10 tons of cocaine each month.

https://twitter.com/VillaFernando_/status/1529853967563476994

Anticorreístas used the opportunity to post old photos dating back from 2009 showing Norero next Rafael Correa and Ricardo Patiño (then the coordinating minister for policy and the executive secretary of Alianza PAIS) and next a police commander and an army general. The photos were taken as part of the process to legalize street gangs and reintegrate their members into legal sector, notably in small catering business. While the process scored some initial successes (a decrease of murder rate from 15 to 5 per 100,000 between 2011 and 2017), it hasn’t proven enduring due to economic downturn, explosion of unemployment and budget cutbacks in social rehabilitation programs.

The properties of Norero

According to the police and the justice, Norero and his relatives have amassed a quite sizable fortune, being the owners of at least eleven properties and thirteen vehicles amounting for a total value of about $15 million. This include a truck worth $97.000, a large car wash station in La Aurora (a posh suburb of Guayaquil), a flat in Manglaralto (Santa Elena), another one in Manta (Manabí), a beauty salon frequented by Guayaquil socialites and a 285 square meters property in La Puntilla, a super-wealthy suburb of Guayaquil where lot of millionaires are living in villas and gated communities (La Puntilla was, by far, Lasso’s best parish on national level in the 2021 presidential first round with the CREO candidate receiving there 87.1% of the votes, a good indication of the type of people living there). Also located in La Puntilla, in the Riberas del Batán sector where the price of a house is ranging from $400,000 to $2 million, is a case owned by Norero’s girlfriend.

Norero is also suspected to be a shareholder of six companies, including one in cocoa production, one in shrimp selling business and two providing aesthetics and spa services.

Norero’s ties with Xavier Jordán

Villavicencio claimed then that the house of Riberas del Batán previously belonged to Xavier Jordán, a businessman seek by the Ecuadorian justice over his participation in the corruption scheme set up in the Teodoro Maldonado Carbo hospital of Guayaquil in which were also members Daniel Salcedo (a political operative of the Fuerza Ecuador party arrested in June 2020 and sentenced to 13 years in jail for illegal sales of medicines), three sons of Abdalá Bucaram (Dalo, Michel and Jacobo) as well Pablo Mendoza, a businessman owning several restaurants with his wife.

Jordán is living in the United States since 2019 with his wife who is posting on social networks photos of their lives of luxury (expansive cars, yachts, luxury homes). He is now reportedly possibly investigated by the DEA.

https://twitter.com/VillaFernando_/status/1530618845249126403

Attention| The house raided on narco Leandro Norero, in Riberas del Batán, belonged to Javier Jordán, a millionaire accused of corruption in the IESS [Ecuadorian Social Security Institute] during the Correísmo, now located in Miami. The seized Toyota 4WD is registered in the name of Dymarla, a company of the Jordáns.

The commander of the police has since confirmed the house as well as the car has been transferred from Jordán to Norero’s girlfriend ‘between 2009 and 2022’ during a hearing before the National Assembly Oversight Commission chaired by Villavicencio.

The police is now investigating the acquisition of the house in Riberas del Batán by a company registered in Panama and owned by Norero’s girlfriend and the acquisition and resale of the Toyota 4WD by Dymarla, a company founded by Jordán and his brother-in-law (a former health public servant turn contractor of two hospitals including Teodoro Maldonado Carbo) that is reportedly now owned by two companies registered in Costa Rica. Also investigated is the possible buying by Dymarla of ticket planes for Daniel Salcedo and members of the Bucaram family.

Relatedly, in June 2020, Dalo Bucaram was reported being housed with his wife (a former TV presenter and an Instagram influencer who served two terms as a PRE assemblywoman) and their children in the villa owned by Daniel Salcedo in Miami. The pair has since moved to Panama to, remember, open a restaurant.


Jordán’s ties with Ronny Aleaga

Subsequently, Villavicencio and his website, Periodismo de Investigación, published the photos of a party organized in April 2022 in a villa of Miami belonging to Jordán. An UNES assemblyman, Ronny Aleaga, can be seen on them, notably on one where he is standing in a swimming pool next to Leonardo Cortázar (see below) and Xavier Jordán. Aleaga was in a trip in the United States, officially to meet with Ecuadorian migrants. His brother, Ricky, accompanied him.

https://twitter.com/VillaFernando_/status/1531024184087912448

The photo taken in Miami that silenced the Correato. The ties of Leandro Norero’s cartel with fugitives linked to the bargaining of medical supplies in the IESS – CNEL [National Electricity Corporation of Ecuador] (Xavier Jordán, Pablo Mendoza, Leonardo Cortázar) and the UNES assemblyman Ronny Aleaga.

In addition of the aforementioned Jordán and Mendoza is appearing on the photo Leonardo Cortázar, a politician like Aleaga, who served as director of Libertad es Pueblo, a bogus political party founded in 2018 by Gary Moreno (a brother of Lenín) that has since been deregistered (this is the party that fielded the Charles Bronson lookalike as candidate for mayor of Guayaquil). His name is also appearing as a 2007 candidate for Guayas constituent assemblyman for an alliance between Abdalá Bucaram’s Ecuadorian Roldosist Party and the Socialist Party – Broad Front.

The 37-year-old Ronny Aleaga isn’t a random RC member: he is a rising star of Correísmo has been elected last year one of the seven members of the CAL, the only one belonging to the UNES caucus. After a career in the Guayas Alianza PAIS youth movement, he was elected a substitute alternate assemblyman in 2017 and became a full assemblyman in November 2018 when the titular assemblywoman was removed from office after having illegally visited an incarcerated former member of the intelligence service. Aleaga was reelected an assemblyman from the second constituency of Guayas.

Aleaga has been a vocal critic of corruption in the Moreno and Lasso administrations, filling in 2019 the complaint against Moreno and his relatives over the INA Papers case, sponsoring in October 2021 the motion to investigate the ties of President Lasso with offshore companies in the wake of the Pandora Papers revelations and filling that same month a request for impeachment over breach of duties against the current acting comptroller-general.

By his own admission, Aleaga has been, when a teenager, a member of the Latin Kings, one of the street gangs which benefited from legalization under Correa. During a 2019 speech in the National Assembly, responding to a CREO assemblywoman (shortly thereafter removed from office for corruption) who, in his eyes, was displaying prejudice against Latin Kings by blaming them for alleged threats she had received, Aleaga proclaimed his pride of being the first member of a ‘youth urban organization’ to seat in the parliament and, while putting the black-and-gold necklace associated to the street gang, declared he is proudly a Latin King. Such action was predictably heavily criticized by opponents to Correísmo and Aleaga’s past will be now systematically mentioned with insinuations he never actually renounced to criminal activities.

The RC’s answer to allegations against Aleaga

While the single photo is pretty disastrous for the image of the RC, even while ignoring the possible but unproven ties between Norero and Jordán, (a meeting in a festive private setting with a fugitive business who exposed on social network his indecent lavish lifestyle? Who is accused of having robbed money destined to the hospitals? Just in the middle of a shortage of medicines? In a villa of Miami, in the so reviled ‘empire’? With persons linked to ‘the traitor’ Moreno? And also linked with Abdalá Bucaram?), Aleaga and the Correísta movement actually remained silent for five days.

The first reaction happened when, during a radio interview, Correa was asked by a journalist about the photos. An upset Correa answered: ‘Tell me where is the crime?’, ‘What crime Ronny Aleaga has committed’ ‘Where is the crime? I will be the first to go to the prosecutor’s office to file the complaint!’ In the aftermath, the journalist was flooded by insulting comments

But, few hours later:

https://twitter.com/mashirafael/status/1532467958777274369

This is very clear: it is neither ethical nor moral. We just had a very tough meet of in the RC5. I hadn’t been informed there is a warrant for arrest for this guy, Jordán. That TOTALLY changes things. Our ethic committee is going to investigate. This is painful but assemblyman Aleaga should provide an explanation to the country.

(ironically, there is also a warrant for arrest for Correa himself)

Aleaga has since published a statement in which he explained he only met Jordán in a familial meeting as the fugitive businessman is a relative of Aleaga’s girlfriend. He indicates having no ties with Jordán’s economic activities nor legal problems while apologizing to Correa for having apparently provide imprecise details on Jordán’s legal status to the former president before the radio interview. Aleaga is also indicating he will respect the decision of the RC ethic committee.

Fernando Villavicencio has since released another photo showing Jordán next to Marcela Aguiñaga, the president of the RC. This one is however clearly quite old, dating back from before Jordán had problems with the justice. Additionally, it had been taken in a stadium and not in a private context. A good hint of what the campaign for the local elections in next February will look like.

[Sir John Johns]

Aleaga has announced today the US government has revoked his visa.

https://twitter.com/RonnyAleagaS/status/1533842362090373125

As part of the heinous campaign against me, I have been notified the revocation of my visa to the US. It is obvious that lawfare is applied in my case, without facing a single ongoing legal process. It is a matter of time for justice and truth to shine.

Of course, as always, this is because of lawfare.

Anyway, having one of your most prominent assemblyman banned from entering the United States and that just three months after the US government had revoked the visa of Abdalá Bucaram, the embodiment of shameless corruption, isn’t the best publicity for the RC.

[Sir John Johns]

Lot of things happening at the moment but I’m not in good health nor in a good mod at the moment, so sorry if this isn’t updated on a regular basis.

Since yesterday there is an ongoing unlimited national strike (paro) at the call of the CONAIE to demand notably the freezing of fuel prices, fair prices for farmers and growers, the end of oil extraction and mega-mining projects, the abandonment of plans to privatize state-owned companies, a better funding for public health and education sectors that are in a deep crisis and measures for purchasing power of the poorest categories of the Ecuadorian society which are facing unemployment or underemployment, malnutrition and rise in prices of fuel and essential goods.

The paro has been joined by a variety of organizations (often the ones which also demonstrated under the Correa and Moreno administrations) including the two other indigenous confederations (FENOCIN and FEINE), the major unions (FUT, Frente Popular), the teachers’ unions (UNE), university and high school students (six students have been arrested in Collegio Mejía, already a hotbed of contestation under Correa), feminist and anti-extractive groups, banana and rice growers’ organizations in the Costa.

Things are escalating very quickly and have potential to turn very ugly as it has been reported that Leonidas Iza has been arrested ‘for the presumption of committing crimes’. The ‘crimes’ have not been specified. The CONAIE has denounced the arrest as ‘violent and illegal’ and is now calling for ‘a large indigenous and popular levantamiento’.

https://twitter.com/CONAIE_Ecuador/status/1536630052309422080

The arrest of Iza has been also denounced by the Alliance of Organizations for Human Rights which is talking about a criminalization and persecution of the right to social protest and mobilization:

https://twitter.com/DDHH_Alianza/status/1536668490672885763

Acts of violence from both protesters (notably attacks on large plantations in Cotopaxi) and policemen (during students' and feminist marches) have been reported.

The Lasso administration has until now appeared as incredibly tone-deaf towards the demands of the protesters, preferring portraying them as infiltrated and manipulated (the obligatory accusation made by every Ecuadorian government against the indigenous movement since decades) by ‘Guevarist’ and Mariateguist’ radical elements whose objective is to topple the government. It also alleged that the CONAIE is tied to criminal organizations, notably by conflating it with the Correístas, currently embroiled into the scandal of their presumed links with justice fugitive Xavier Jordán.

One of the most vocal to denounce such alleged complicity of the CONAIE with the underworld is no less than Fernando Villavicencio (who had been grant asylum by the Sarayaku community when persecuted by Correa...), who hasn’t produced a single proof to back his claims (while, ironically, there has been recently no shortage of evidences attesting the infiltration of the police, the army and the justice by drug traffickers) just like some of his more recent, and grave, accusations he made against Correístas that aren’t backed by any tangible evidence, so far (unlike the embarrassing photo of Ronny Aleaga in the Miami’s swimming pool). Villavicencio has however released an audio in which Iza was heard saying ‘bringing down the president of the Republic isn’t going to be easy’. Iza responded by indicating the audio has been edited and bring out of its context while stating the part on ‘bringing down the president’ was raised by an alleged agent provocateur.

Also, lot of classist and racist comments from right-wing sectors and part of the press (especially La Hora) as well as comments on social networks.

The government has also accused the protesters of jeopardizing the economic recovery and of frightening the foreign tourists and is doing his best to revive the memories of the October 2019 protests among residents of Quito when the city experienced violence (on part of protesters but also of police, that remained largely unpunished) and material destruction (notably the burning of the Contraloría General, blamed without not much evidence on Correísta infiltrators to destroy corruption evidences).

Lasso has hence chosen the direct confrontation with the indigenous movement, which could end into a blood bath or his overthrow.

[Sir John Johns]

https://twitter.com/FerminVaca/status/1536722777482354691

The Prosecutor’s Office confirms that the Public Ministry has still no official knowledge about the arrest of Leonidas Iza. Additionally, it confirms the sequestration of a prosecutor of Cotopaxi by villagers from that province.

So, the Prosecutor’s Office learned about Iza’s arrest through the social networks and is asking provincial prosecutors to ‘coordinate proceedings and actions with the corresponding authorities, with the aim to avoid illegal or arbitrary arrests’. Looks like the arrest of Iza is totally illegal...

[Sir John Johns]

Reportedly (but apparently no official source), after having spent eight hours in the flagrante delicto unit in Quito where he had been taken by the police, Iza has been bring back by helicopter to Cotopaxi, the province he was arrested in, to be presented before the flagrante delicto unit of Latacunga (a problem of jurisdiction it seems). However, according to the INREDH (which is describing this whole mess as illegal), there is talk of bringing him back to Quito because the organization of a hearing in Latacunga could prove difficult.

Indeed, there are at the moment impressive gatherings of protesters in the city.

https://twitter.com/CONAIE_Ecuador/status/1536756697871654914

Some big rivals of Iza inside the indigenous movement have denounced the arrest of the leader of the CONAIE like for example Yaku Pérez, Lourdes Tibán (who has won the internal Pachakutik primaries to be the party’s candidate for prefect of Cotopaxi), or Marlon Santi, the national coordinator of Pachakutik.

https://twitter.com/yakuperezg/status/1536669900197994498

https://twitter.com/lourdestiban1/status/1536621939204231175

The prosecutor sequestred by protesters in Cotopaxi has been released.

[Sir John Johns]

A judge of the Penal Unit of Latacunga has ruled the custody of Iza as legal and formally indicted the CONAIE president for ‘paralysis of a public service’, one of the favorite charges previously used by the Correa and Moreno administrations to prosecute organizers of social protests. Iza’s lawyers are challenging the accusation of blockade of the Pan-American Highway, arguing the road wasn’t obstructed at the time of the arrest of Iza.

The judge however also granted the indigenous leader alternative measures (prohibition of leaving the national territory and obligation of appearing twice a week before the prosecutor’s office) and ordered his immediate releasing. The trial hearing is scheduled for 4 July.

During the hearing, Iza stated the police didn’t read his rights at the time of his arrest, waiting instead several hours to do so, and that he had been unable to communicate with his lawyer or his relatives.

In addition to accusations of irregularities and illegalities in the arrest of Iza, the judge of Latacunga in charge of the case has previously ordered the release and the dropping of charges against the brother of Ponzi scheme head Don Naza, arrested in a car with $13,000 on him. Her name is also appearing among the list of officials accused in 2020 of fraudulently claiming disability benefits.

https://twitter.com/CONAIE_Ecuador/status/1536944717870637056

The CONAIE has reiterated its call for a national paro with indigenous protesters converging towards Quito and currently blocking eight oil wells in Orellana province.

The irony is that observers widely considered the paro had been a failure on day one. But that was before the arrest of Iza which seemingly ignite, intensify and radicalize the protests and reunite a badly divided indigenous movement.

As always, Vilma Traca perfectly nails it:

https://twitter.com/vilmavargasva/status/1536800991420600320

Guillermo Lasso: ‘I told them he was going to end with his bones in jail*’
Alfredo Borrero**: ‘The president does what he promised’

The bearded small guy is Carlos Vera, a right-wing TV pundit.

Over the cage where Iza is imprisoned: ‘Social Protest’
Over the empty cages: ‘Criminals’ ‘Narcos’ ‘Assassins’

* This is indeed what he said some months ago.
** The vice president of Ecuador who is politically non-existent and often on international trips to discuss health matters – he is a physician by training and was on the ticket only for dealing with the coronavirus.

[Sir John Johns]

The paro is still ongoing and gaining traction.

https://twitter.com/wambraEc/status/1537602280781926401

In 22 provinces have been registered activities during the fourth day of the national paro.

Pichincha is reporting the largest number of actions. In the rest of the provinces, hundreds of persons increase their adhesion to the mobilizations.

What other part of the country is mobilized?

As showed by the map, protests and mobilizations are mostly happening in the Sierra and the Amazon with Quito and its province, Pichincha, becoming the center of convergence of indigenous protesters joined by inhabitants of the capital (left-wing groups, unions, students, feminists, environmentalists) who are gathering in the southern part of the town. Truck drivers’ groups briefly joined the paro and participated in the blockade before obtaining concessions from the government. Clashes between protesters and police have happened on the Santo Domingo plaza even if, broadly speaking, not much violence has been reported on behalf of protesters or policemen. Floricultural companies in Cotopaxi have denounced violent irruptions of protesters in flower plantations accompanied with vandalism and at least one police car has been burnt down in Quito. Meanwhile, the police has been criticized for several episode of unnecessary violence against protesters and has been forced to apologize for the beating in Cotopaxi of a journalist and his cameraman and the destruction of the phone belonging to another journalist. Still not comparable to the unleash of violence that happened in October 2019.

Indigenous protests appear to be particularly strong in the north and central highlands and in the Amazon.

For example, in Imbabura, indigenous protesters coming from the neighboring cantons of Otavalo and Cotacachi, have marched to the provincial capital, Ibarra, where administrative and economic activities are reported to be in idle.

https://twitter.com/PrimeraPlanaECU/status/1537573884026884096

In Bolívar, an impoverished and remote province in the highlands, there is also massive protests and demonstrators have take control of the governor’s office in the capital, Guaranda.

https://twitter.com/PrimeraPlanaECU/status/1537573531730554880

There is also road blockades by indigenous groups in the vicinity of Cuenca where students and teachers are also protesting over alleged police violence. The academic authorities there have denounced the launching of tear gas bombs by the police in the university premises.

https://twitter.com/EnQuitoFf/status/1537594147967799298

National paro after the brutal repression of the students in Cuenca. Today, the number of protesters doubled in the city. For an education of quality.

Conversely, the protests have been far less impressive in the Costa, and even non-existent in provinces like Manabí or Esmeraldas. This was already the case back in 2019 but this year there is also the state of exception and curfew measures implemented to curb the explosion of criminality. Nevertheless, on 3 June, inhabitants of Esmeraldas city participated to a march of peace to denounce insecurity but also abandonment by the central state.

The mayor of Guayaquil, Cynthia Viteri, has for her part ordered the blockade of the city’s inbound roads with municipal vehicles and dump trucks to prevent the entry into Guayaquil of indigenous protesters coming from the highlands. ‘We want to inform them that they aren’t going to come to Guayaquil to destroy it’ said the PSC mayor, who has in the last weeks trashed President Lasso for his inability to tackle criminality and went herself to Quito for a meeting of the president with mayors accompanied with a whole police squad (a ridiculous show mocked in the press but intended to please Guayaquil’s parochialism and exploit the traditional hostility of the city with Quito and the central government).



https://twitter.com/LassoGuillermo/status/1537625970143789056

Dialogue is the best way to search together solutions to the problems that affect Ecuadorians.

#We can't parar*

*stop/block/engage into a paro; hinting at the government communications on the economic consequences and effects on the fight against criminality provoked (or allegedly provoked) by strikes, protests and road blockades.

In a short broadcast message, President Lasso has made some concessions, announcing the implementation of unspecified mechanisms to control prices and avoid speculation and debt relief measures for poorest households. While reiterating dialogue is the only way to end the current situation and his approval of a mediation with the indigenous movement, he also warned that he could greenlight the use of progressive use of force by the police in case the protests are turning more violent. He also stated there is no trigger (detonante) to justify violence, unlike 2019 when the Moreno government decided the termination of fuel subsidies, indicating his government isn’t contemplating privatizing public strategic sectors or services. Except, that Lasso has actually and foolishly created a ‘trigger’ with the irregular arrest of Iza.


The CONAIE has answered to the president’s message by stating there will be no dialogue if the government doesn’t address the ten demands presented by the indigenous movement.

https://twitter.com/CONAIE_Ecuador/status/1537681961250168832

The CONAIE and sibling organizations are pronouncing:

Mr. Lasso, you offer dialogue and afterward threaten to apply the progressive use of force, this is not coherent. When you say that there are no ‘trigger’, you confirm you know nothing about this country.

5th day of national paro

Iza has also announced indigenous will continue gathering in Quito and that he will join then in two days. He also call to the summoning of a popular assembly of social movements and ask protesters to reject acts of vandalism and violence.

[Sir John Johns]

Not looking good...

https://twitter.com/LassoGuillermo/status/1537990403328135172

In a short TV broadcast, Guillermo Lasso has declared the state of exception for 30 days in three provinces of the highlands where protests and road blocking have been particularly strong: Pichincha, Imbabura and Cotopaxi. Arguing that protests are hurting public order and provoking situations of ‘manifest violence’ putting into jeopardy ‘the safety of citizens and the correct functioning of the vital strategic sectors for the country’s economy’, the government has issued Decree 455 suspending in the three provinces the exercise of the right to freedom of association and assembly and prohibiting gathering and crowds in public space during the whole day. Remember, Lasso campaigned after the first round under the promise of the ‘government of the encounter’.

Additionally, a ‘security area’ will be established in the Metropolitan District of Quito (DMQ) to be secure by a ‘joint task force’ comprising the army and the national police. The armed forces will also be unable to assist the police to maintain public order and ensure the distribution of food and hydrocarbons. Also a curfew is instituted in the DMQ where vehicular traffic will be restricted and the right to the inviolability of the home suspended. Security forces will also be authorized to resort on progressive use of force. There is also mentions of controls for foreign citizens found participating into violent protests, bringing up bad memories of the expel of Manuela Picq by the Correa administration or the xenophobic allegations made by the Moreno government over supposed Venezuelan infiltrators during the 2019 protests.

But, all of these measures, which are already constituting a blatant violations of basic freedoms have been not as controversial as the article 9 of the decree:

https://twitter.com/susanamorg/status/1538007043956649986

According to the decree of Lasso, in Pichincha, Imbabura and Cotopaxi the right to freedom of information is restricted. The government will have the power to suspend or limit internet and telephone services. This is not new: it was applied by Correa, Chávez-Maduro, Ortega.

This isn’t new in Ecuador, but it is the first time it is mentioned in a decree. In the marches that took place during the correísmo, there was blockades of services in the areas of gatherings. In regimes like the one of Chávez-Maduro, people learned to use VPN to access information.

The decree of Lasso is so ambiguous it is open to any interpretation and possible censorship of medias or citizens’ contents. In democracy, there is always freedom of information.

In face of the uproar by journalists and human rights organizations, the judicial secretary of the presidency ‘clarified’ on a Twitter space that the version of the Decree 455 posted on official accounts was only a draft (a draft with the signature of the president...) and that the article 9 isn’t part of the final version of the decree.

https://twitter.com/ECdimitri/status/1538045938715004931

New version of the Decree 455, also with the signature of Guillermo Lasso, confirms the suspension of the right to the inviolability of the home and curfew in Quito for 30 days.

Removes the gag (article 9) and the word ‘lethal’ (article 10).

So a disastrous display of amateurism (just few days after the heavily criticized secretary for Communication Eduardo Bonilla has been replaced) and apparent disdain for basic freedoms on behalf of the government.

Enough to rise strong concerns over a brutal crackdown on the protests and to overshadow the series of concessions made by Lasso in his broadcast (criticized by the CONAIE for their lack of details and explanations about how it will be financed): increase of the human development bond (kind of basic income) from $50 to $55; declaration of emergency state in the health sector; doubling of the budget allocated to intercultural education; subsidies for small and middle farmers for the acquisition of urea; forgiveness of past-due loans up to $3,000 by public bank BanEcuador; no increase in fuel prices; no privatizations of public services and strategic sectors.

Critics have pointed out how you need to paralyze half of the country to make the government realize there is a massive crisis in the hospitals and to do something to address the dire economic situation in the rural indigenous communities, kind of confirming what has been written for months by commentators on the complete disconnection of the Lasso administration with large parts of the country.

[Sir John Johns]

Related to the latter point (the disconnection of President Lasso with the indigenous and rural world), maps of the 2021 presidential election are enlightening.



In the first round, when Lasso officially received only about 32,100 votes more than the third-placed candidate, Yaku Pérez (Pachakutik), against a backdrop of allegations of fraud, the CREO candidate came ahead in only three rural parishes on Ecuador mainland. His support was heavily concentrated in urban areas, hence such a caricatural map (which adds the rural/urban divide to the Costa/Sierra divide) I struggle to find any comparable example elsewhere. Unlike in 2013 and 2017, Lasso placed second or below in the rural highlands (which went to Pérez in a landslide) and only topped the polls in densely urbanized areas, generally in the, wealthiest, historical downtowns (notably in North Quito and in Guayaquil where, thanks to the PSC machine, he placed first in Tarqui, the Ecuadorian parish with the largest number of registered voters: 640,000 i.e. 4.9% of the national total voters) and in the posh suburbs, partly constituted of gated communities, of Quito (57.9% in Cumbayá) and Guayaquil (60.1% in La Aurora and 87.1% in La Puntilla, its best national result).



While, the map of the runoff (when Lasso won 52.4% of the valid votes) is illustrating how he managed to capture enough votes to be elected in the highlands and the Amazon, thanks to a brilliant runoff campaign (being however defeated by Arauz in the indigenous communities of the south-central highlands and central Cotopaxi which voted for Pérez in the first round), there is the other part of the story: the call to cast a null vote (‘ideological null vote’) by the CONAIE, Pachakutik and various unions which refused to choose between a neoliberal banker and the appointed heir of the man who criminalized social protest.



Null votes (which accounted for 16.3% of total votes cast, a record share of votes, up from 9.5% in the first round) ‘came ahead’ in a vast majority of the indigenous-populated areas in the central highlands, from Cotopaxi to Saraguro in Loja province (indigenous in northern Sierra and in Amazon had another vote dynamics). Hence why Lasso won in 2021 while gathering some 177,000 votes less than in the 2017 runoff when Arauz lost some 825,000 votes compared to Moreno in 2017.

The map of distribution of null votes is largely overlapping the ones of ongoing mobilizations (bar the province of Santa Elena in the Costa) while slightly differing from the one of the distribution of indigenous population (for example, Azuay had a low indigenous self-identification in the 2010 census but was the province with the highest share of null votes – 30.5%; on the opposite, Napo has a high indigenous self-identification but was the Amazon province with the lowest share of null votes – 18.7% - and has been less active in the protests against Lasso).



https://twitter.com/confeniae1/status/1537867010809503744

[Sir John Johns]

The situation is on the verge of going out of control due to a series of political mistakes and police brutality on behalf of the Ecuadorian government and protests at risk of being overrun by looters and violent elements.

* The CONAIE has denounced on 18 June an attempted attack against Iza whose car would have received what seems to be a bullet. According to a justice investigation, however, the bullet was from a paintball gun leading opponents to the paro to deride the episode as an autoatentado (‘autoattack’).

* The Lasso administration has been yet embroiled in a controversy when the Interior Minister and the Communication Secretary posted on Twitter a call to supporters of the government to participate in a 'march for peace' in Quito. This was posted just few hours after public gatherings had been prohibited in the capital by that same government. A nice way to demonstrate that, in Ecuador, indigenous have less rights than the white/mestizo urban dwellers.

The government-sponsored protest gathered only some 200 participants on the Los Shyris Avenue in northern Quito and was dispersed by the rainy weather.

* On 19 June, the police raided the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana in Quito, on the pretext of preventing the ‘storing of war material for protests’ by Ecuadorian and Venezuelan nationals. No ‘war material’ was found and no arrest happened but the police came back to seize the premises of the Casa de la Cultura with the aim to turn them into a riot control headquarters. The Casa de la Cultura has been used as a shelter area by indigenous demonstrators during previous protests (notably the October 2019 ones), so the government’s goal was clearly to prevent protesters using it again as a place to rest. Similarly, the university authorities in Quito, presumably under the pressure of the government, stated the educational facilities could not be used as shelter areas by protesters unlike in 2019. The takeover of the Casa de la Cultura by the police has been denounced by its head as arbitrary, illegal and contravening to the autonomy of cultural institutions. The last time an Ecuadorian government took over the Casa de la Cultura was during the 1960s and 1970s dictatorships, so not a great symbol for the Lasso administration.

* On 20 June, Lasso override an attempt by the National Assembly to strike down Decree 455 by a plenary vote by withdrawing said decree in the middle of the parliamentary debates and issuing a new decree (Decree 459) including the same provisions than Decree 455 and extending it to three new provinces (Chimborazo, Pastaza, Tungurahua) in addition to the three provinces concerned by Decree 455 (Cotopaxi, Imbabura, Pichincha).

As the National Assembly's agenda wasn't scheduling a debate on Decree 459, the debate and the passage of a motion on Decree 455 were made pointless while the legislators had to wait a future session to debate the new decree.

* In spite of the state of exception decreed by the government, a large protest took place in Quito yesterday, led by Leonidas Iza himself.

https://twitter.com/lahistoriaec/status/1539684867914579968

Meanwhile, road blockades are reported in Guayas province including on the road connecting Guayaquil with one of its suburbs, Daule, while people also demonstrated in Manabí province against the policies of Guillermo Lasso. The mayor of Guayaquil, Cynthia Viteri, has exposed a plan to import food from Peru to address the supply problems provoked by the protests and the road blockades in the highlands. The only problem is that there is an ongoing strike of truck drivers in Peru…

* A series of violent incidents has been reported. Notably, three indigenous protesters have been killed during demonstrations: one in the vicinity of Cuenca, who apparently lost his life during a police intervention to dismantle a road blockade; one killed in a rural parish of Quito when falling into a ravine during a police crackdown; finally, one killed in the city of Puyo (Pastaza province, Amazon), murdered by the police according to the CONAIE, killed while manipulating explosive devices according to the police.

That latter death has triggered yesterday riots in Puyo during which a police station, police cars and motorcycles and a Banco de Guayaquil branch office were burnt down by protesters who sequestrated two policemen. According to GK, which has reached the Puyo hospital director, a tomography of the deceased protester is strongly indicating this one has been killed by a tear gas bomb, hence dismissing the police version. Thanks to a mediation of a coordination of social and indigenous organizations, the sequestrated policemen have been freed.

Meanwhile, protesters have took over an electric substation in Tungurahua in an attempt to disturb the electricity supply of Guayaquil (the governor’s office in the province is also occupied by demonstrators). There are been also reports of racketeering of vendors, carriers or motorists by road blockaders/protesters (or people passing as protesters/criminals taking advantage of the situation) including the widely publicized case of a Quito taxi driver whose vehicle was burnt down by bikers angry at discovering there was no money to steal in the taxi.

Another protest was organized also yesterday on Los Shyris Avenue by opponents to the paro who came from the well-to-do northern Quito, Cumbaya parish and Los Chillos Valley to march ‘for peace’ and against ‘vandalism’ and economic paralysis. A petition was also signed to prosecute Iza for ‘terrorism and sedition’.

* A mediation to initiate a dialogue between the government and the CONAIE and enabling the end of the social crisis has been launched by a coordination of some 300 NGOs and has received the support of various personalities, notably Nina Gualinga, an Amazonian indigenous environment and women’s rights activist. Lasso has accepted the mediation and sent a letter addressing the ten demands of the CONAIE; however, in its response, the indigenous organization has added four new demands:

- the end of actions of repression and criminalization
- the end of the state of exception and guarantees to not pass new decrees related to the national paro
- the end of attack against humanitarian shelters.
- the discussion of the entire protesters’ agenda with no point being deemed as ‘unfeasible’ by the government.

The government is now analyzing the response made by the CONAIE.

* Nevertheless, it is hard for the indigenous movement to trust the Lasso administration after the actions it had taken at the beginning of the paro and the numerous promises made by the CREO candidate on the campaign trail that have remained unfulfilled. Declarations made recently in a radio interview by Juan Manuel Fuertes, a veteran christian democrat politician who served until few months ago as an undersecretary for governance in the Lasso administration, are confirming that the current president, elected on the promise of setting up a ‘government of the encounter’ has actually never shown much interest for dealing with indigenous communities and addressing their demands:

https://twitter.com/fabriciovelav/status/1539659605143597057

Enlightening

Here, Juan Manuel Fuertes makes revelations over his stint in the government:

‘I prepared an answer (December 2021)… about the issues raised by the CONAIE… Alexandra Vela moved to the presidency and someone there came up with the idea there was nothing to answer’.

* Also, Lasso has chosen the best moment for being tested positive to coronavirus.

[Sir John Johns]

Lasso is facing an impeachment proceeding

Discontent over the Lasso administration has shifted from the streets to the National Assembly where the UNES has formally started on 24 June the muerte cruzada process to impeach President Lasso and trigger early presidential and legislative elections to complete the 2021-2025 period. The UNES is arguing of a ‘serious political crisis and internal commotion’, however the move is seen as kind of opportunistic on behalf of the Correístas.

The support of two thirds of the legislature (91 votes) is required for the impeachment to be successful but the problem is that, so far, the partisans of a removal of Lasso are far from that magic number. Only the UNES bench (47 seats) has made clear it will vote in its favor as well as the rebel wing of Pachakutik (6 seats). The national coordinator of Pachakutik, Marlon Santi, has also called the legislators of the indigenous party to vote in favor of the muerte cruzada but it is very uncertain all Pachakutik legislators would approve it. By adding independents and dissidents of the ID, Primicias is estimating that around 67 legislators could approve the removal of Lasso meaning there are still additional 25 legislators needed to be searched among the benches that have categorically rejected voting in favor of the impeachment (PSC, ID and, obviously, BAN). Bar a last-minute (and very unlikely) surprise, the plenary vote that could take place today appears doomed to fail.

Constitutionally, the muerte cruzada could only be requested by the National Assembly once in the legislature, meaning the UNES may have wasted the only legal opportunity to remove Lasso until 2023 (muerte cruzada couldn’t be requested in the last year of the four-year presidential term). However, in the past Ecuadorian legislators have had no qualms inventing pretexts for removing a president from office or botching the whole impeachment proceedings. Infamous precedents are including Neptalí Bonifaz being prevented from taking office in 1932 over the dubious pretext him having a Peruvian citizenship, Abdalá Bucaram being removed in 1997 on the grounds of ‘mental incapacity’ decided by the Congress without not even a medical examination or Lucio Gutiérrez being ousted for ‘abandonment of post’ in 2005 few minutes after he had fled the presidential palace in a helicopter.

There is also an ongoing process to collect 1.96 million signatures and force a recall referendum against Lasso on the pretext the incumbent president isn’t complying with the government plan he was elected on. However, it has only been green-lighted by the National Electoral Council on early June and the process of gathering signatures and later authenticate them will take months and months with, according to observers, few probability of success.

The paro is running out of steam

As the paro is entering its third week, the support for the social movement appears to diminish. According to the Ecuadorian government, there are currently 4,500 indigenous protesters in Quito, down from 20,000 at the peak of the movement while the number of blockades and disturbances has decreased from 700 a day to 150. Pro-Lasso outlets are (possibly a bit prematurely) proclaiming the defeat of the indigenous movement with, for example, an article titled ‘Why Leonidas Iza has crashed?’ being published on 4 Pelagatos.

Such result has been achieved by the government making concessions in the economic area while asserting its willingness to crackdown on violent protesters and thanks by the exploitation by the Lasso administration of deadly confrontations between demonstrators and law enforcement officers and the ambiguous relationship between Iza and the Correístas to seed divisions in the indigenous movement and discredit the protests as a movement aiming at overthrowing the government and not at improving the lives of indigenous communities.

In the detail, the government made a first goodwill gesture on 23 June when the government minister, Francisco Jiménez, terminated the militarization of the Casa de la Cultura in Quito and allowed the indigenous protesters to use the building to hold an assembly.

Nevertheless, the generally peaceful protests of the daytime ended up in the evening with particularly violent clashes between the police and protesters, notably in the El Arbolito park (in the vicinity of the Casa de la Cultura) where an indigenous protester was killed, shot with a pellet, and where even minors suffered police brutality. That same night, a group of soldiers was ambushed by violent and armed persons in San Antonio de Pichincha (to the north of Quito) with one of the attackers being killed and seventeen soldiers being injured. Both incidents, whose videos had been widely shared on social networks and televisions, fit well with the narrative sold by the Lasso administration about demonstrations being taking over by violent elements only motivated by the perspective of overthrowing the government.

The day thereafter, Lasso (who apparently has stopped overnight suffering coronavirus) warned during a televised message that he had authorized the progressive use of force by the police and the armed forces against violent protesters and claimed that Iza had lost control of the demonstrations that were infiltrated by criminal elements. He also pretended that Iza’s real goal was to ‘trick his bases and usurp the legally constituted government’ by ‘staging a coup’, far from the elaboration of ‘an agenda for the benefit of indigenous peoples and nationalities’. Hence, Lasso advised indigenous protesters to leave Quito and return to their communities. The message was dubbed in Kichwa to be sure it being heard.

The government then exploited several events to portray the protests movements as part of a Correa-inspired plan to overthrow Lasso from the opening of the impeachment proceedings by the UNES to the support gave to such move by part of the CONAIE and to the timely hacking of the Twitter account of Apawki Castro, a communicator of the CONAIE, and the publication of leaked documents supposed to demonstrate the existence of discussion between the CONAIE leadership and several Correísta bigwigs ((Paola Pabón, the prefect of Pichincha, and Virgilio Hernández, a former minister and assemblyman) to get logistical and financial support for the paro. The leaked documents, said by Apawki Castro to have been entirely forged, also exposed the alleged financing of the indigenous movement by foreign NGOs, a particularly weak accusation considering the leak was only about Castro mentioning he could requested $8,000 in advance to the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and the Swift Foundation to which has been added by this El Universo article the financing of projects unrelated to the paro by the Catalan government and the Latin American Coordination for Cinema and Communication of the Indigenous Peoples. Allegations of financing and manipulation of the indigenous movement by foreign actors have been a favorite excuse for Ecuadorian governments to discredit it, notably used by the government of Rafael Correa that get it repeated in its international media friends (like The Grayzone).

The Lasso government also exploited the old divisions inside the indigenous movement which have transparently resurfaced as demonstrated by the call of the vice president of the rival FENOCIN organization who had publicly invited Lasso for a dialogue in El Arbolito and was rebutted by the CONAIE or the criticisms addressed over the violence during the protests by the organizations of the Costa (National Campesino Movement; Montubio People; Conaice, the regional affiliate of the CONAIE whose leader enjoys mediocre relations with Iza) which distanced themselves from the Sierra protesters while still mobilizing against Lasso.

The start of negotiations between the government and the indigenous movement

As the president of the National Assembly, Virgilio Saquicela, announced on 25 June the beginning of a dialogue between Lasso and the CONAIE under the aegis of the legislative power, the churches, that same day, President Lasso repealed Decree 459 (on state of exception in Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Imbabura, Pastaza, Pichincha and Tungurahua) and terminated the state of exception in the provinces concerned by indigenous protests, hence complying with one of the demands of the CONAIE. Decree 459 had been in effect for only five days and has largely failed to deter protests.

The following day, Lasso announced a lowering of prices in gasoline, effective on 28 June, with the price of Extra and Ecopaís (respectively an 87 octanes gasoline and a mix between said Extra and bioethanol) being reduced from $2,55 to $2,45 per liter (CONAIE is demanding $2,10) and Diesel from $1,90 to $1,80 per liter (CONAIE is demanding $1,50). According to Francisco Jiménez, the measure will cost $250 million in fuel subside, a sum criticized in the pro-business press which is indicating the budget allocated to fuel subsides is now superior to the one allocated to health or social welfare.

Nevertheless, the lowering in prices of gasoline is still deemed as insufficient by the CONAIE which however participated yesterday in a first meeting with government representatives (attended by Iza himself but not Lasso) in order to reach an agreement. While the Lasso administration has agreed to repeal decree 95 aiming at expanding oil extraction in the Amazon, it expressed its unwillingness to further decrease the gasoline price arguing it would be too much expansive and is now facing a new demand of the CONAIE, the removal of the Interior Minister whose management of the protest movements have been heavily criticized. I guess the ongoing proceedings against Iza and protesters accused of violence will quickly be put on the table and any solution that will please the CONAIE will certainly not please your average Lasso voter (and vice versa).

Negotiations are however still ongoing while the paro is still continuing and has been rejoined by the taxi drivers of Quito (against the leadership of their organization) which are also demanding their piece of the cake to a politically weakened government.

[Sir John Johns]

Dialogue is collapsing over deadly attack while situation is escalating

A convoy of tankers transporting fuel to enable the continuation of oil extraction in the ITT oil block (in the Yasuní National Park) and escorted by soldiers has been reportedly attacked early this morning by a hundred of indigenous carrying firearms and spears in the vicinity of Shushufindi (Sucumbíos province). One soldier has been killed during the attack and seven soldiers and five policemen injured. The military leadership is denouncing ‘an act of terrorism’.

https://twitter.com/CarrilloRosero/status/1541773899960033280

The CONAIE as well as several human rights and ecological NGOs are disputing the version of the events presented by the army and instead maintains that the gun battle was started by the soldiers when they tried to force the roadblock set up by the indigenous protesters.

https://twitter.com/CONAIE_Ecuador/status/1541868294440996866


Guillermo Lasso has used the deadly incident (as well as the blockade by protesters of trucks transporting oxygen for the hospitals of Cuenca) to unilaterally terminate the dialogue with the CONAIE and announce he will not resume talks with Iza who, according to Lasso, ‘is only defending his political interests and not the ones of his bases’. He however indicated he will return to the table of dialogue when there will be ‘legitimate representatives of all indigenous peoples and nationalities of Ecuador, who seeks true solutions and are open to a real and honest dialogue’. He concluded by calling to ‘national unity’ and stating ‘we have to defend democracy’.

https://twitter.com/LassoGuillermo/status/1541843461690867717


The CONAIE has answered with a harsh statement:

https://twitter.com/CONAIE_Ecuador/status/1541849225641738240

The government breaks the dialogue, confirming its authoritarianism, lack of willingness and incapacity.

We hold Guillermo Lasso responsible for the consequences of his bellicose politics. We demand respect for our top leader. Lasso doesn’t break with Leonidas, he break with the people.

In a second message, Lasso postured as a champion of democracy and the defender of the institutionality (which is actually in a very sorry state, partly because of Lasso himself) against the ‘putschist’ intentions of the UNES and called assemblymen to ‘fulfill their responsibility with the country’ as a vote on muerta cruzada is planned to take place in the next hours.

https://twitter.com/LassoGuillermo/status/1541859337265618947

Hard to be optimistic over the next days.

[Sir John Johns]

The attempt to impeach Guillermo Lasso has failed as 80 assemblymen out of the 92 required voted in favor of the muerte cruzada. 48 assemblymen have voted against and 9 choose to abstain.

In the detail, the whole UNES bench voted in favor of the removal of Lasso as well as 21 Pachakutik assemblymen (Quishpe-led and ‘rebel’ factions alike), three ex-ID and one ID assemblymen,  various independents including the president of the National Assembly, Virgilio Saquicela, and two assemblymen theoretically belonging to the BAN (Mariano Curicama from Chimborazo and Augusto Guamán from Sucumbíos).

The bulk of the BAN, PSC and ID benches voted against, including Wilma Andrade, Dalton Bacigalupo, Marlon Cadena (all three ID) and Guido Chiriboga (BAN), whose votes were initially counted as a ‘yes’ (but corrected as ‘no’) in what has been denounced by the four assemblymen as an alleged manipulation of electronic voting system.

The nine assemblymen who abstained are Guadalupe Llori, Ricardo Vanegas and Gissella Molina (all three belonging to Pachakutik), Amada Ortiz, Lucia Placensia and Xavier Santos (all three ex-ID), Luis Almeida and Marjorie Chávez (PSC) and Ana León, the substitute of Daniel Noboa (independent).

While, Lasso has save his skin for now, an absolute majority in the legislature has voted in favor of his removal from office, which doesn’t not bode well for future parliamentary vote to get his agenda passed. It is also now official that Saquicela is belonging to the opposition to the president which is undermining his recent posture as a mediator between the government and the indigenous movement.

Additionally, as only one single vote on a muerte cruzada is possible during a legislature, there is no constitutional option remaining for the parliament to oust the president who is remaining in a precarious political position.



Meanwhile, violent clashes happened this night in San Miguel del Común, an indigenous community in Calderón parish (north to Quito). Human rights organizations have denounced the use of tear gas by the police against inhabitants, including children (the death of a child was wrongly reported), while the Interior Minister has deplored the burning down of two police stations in Calderón.

The methods of the Ecuadorian police have just been criticized by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child:

https://twitter.com/UNChildRights1/status/1542057923685355522

also by Laurita nuns, about the brutal police intervention at one of their schools used to shelter indigenous protesters:

https://twitter.com/LaPeriodicanet/status/1541922299829522433

URGENT | Carmen Cepeda, nun at the Colegio Miguel del Hierro in Quito, where a wide police deployment has taken place, indicates that: ‘Here, we are women, children. We want to call on Guillermo Lasso for PEACE. Please, let’s turn down the weapons.

UPDATE | The police withdrew from the sector of Colegio Miguel del Hierro. It is a space of peace that houses men, women, girls and boys. The call of the government is for respecting and preserving its safety and integrity.

[Sir John Johns]

After eighteen days of protests and road blockades, the nationwide paro has ended on 30 June, thanks to an unexpected agreement between the government and the three main indigenous organizations (the CONAIE; the FENOCIN, historically linked to the Socialist Party; the FEINE tied to the evangelical indigenous communities) obtained thanks to the mediation of the Catholic Church (through the Episcopal Conference) that is confirming it is remaining a powerful political actor.

The agreement is including:

* an additional 5 cents decrease in the price of gasoline for a total 15 cents reduction
* a (yet to be defined) government policy of targeting the categories of population the most needing financial help in the granting of fuel subsidies as such subsidies are currently benefiting all drivers regardless of their income while feeding smuggling with neighboring Colombia
* the repeal of decree 95 passed to increase oil extraction in the Amazon
* the modification of decree 151 (passed by Lasso to foster mining in Ecuador) to prohibit extractive activities in protected areas, ancestral territories and lands with an archaeological value or in the nearby of water sources and to reassert the right of indigenous communities to prior consultation
* the repeal of the state of exception decree passed on 29 June by the government and concerning the provinces of Azuay and Imbabura in the highlands and Sucumbíos and Orellana in the Amazon (the third state of exception decided since the start of the paro which, just the two previous ones, was short-lived and largely useless)
* the declaration of a state of emergency in the public health sector that is facing shortages and financial hardships
* the installation of round tables reuniting representatives of indigenous and peasant sectors and government delegates to discuss the implementation of the agreement within ninety days

In a public ceremony, the agreement was signed by Leonidas Iza as well as Eustaquio Tuala, the head of the FEINE, but not, in a first time, by the president of the FENOCIN, Gary Espinoza (reportedly upset by the absence of an amnesty for protesters and debt forgiveness for small farmers as well as what he considers as an insufficient reduction in price of gasoline), who refused to put his signature on the document for several minutes before being convinced to do so by other indigenous leaders. The positions of Espinoza, an Afro-Ecuadorian (the first one to lead a major indigenous organization) hailing from the coastal province of Esmeraldas who is advocating socialist ideas and is promoting food sovereignty, is contrasting with the ones of the past leaders of the FENOCIN who have been usually pro-government regardless of whom is in office.

The episode is exposing the old divisions inside the indigenous movement and may signify the emergence of a wing more radical than Iza, who has adopted a rather moderating tone in the few days preceding the agreement and talked about ‘responsibility with the country’ during the signature ceremony.

Meanwhile, while blaming the social crisis on the lack of ‘sincere dialogue’ by the government, Yaku Pérez denounced that same day the alleged presence of violent pro-Correa elements inside the indigenous movement while attacking Iza for being ‘very close to Correísmo’. Such comments were strongly criticized by the Confeniae.


The signature of the agreement appears to have been precipitated, for the indigenous movement, the demobilization of protesters and the risk of the movement being hijacked by violent elements which could tarnish its reputation (and undermine a possible candidacy of Iza for the next presidential election); for the government, the economic consequences of the roadblocks and the protests (estimated at $1 billion by the Central Bank with $775 million for the private sector), the lack of majority in parliament and the massive unpopularity of Lasso.

Nevertheless, some analysts are considering that the biggest loser may have been the UNES which was not much visible in the street demonstrations. The indigenous organization the closest to their views (the old FEI) hasn’t been much mentioned while the yellow union Correa has founded in 2014 and has lost control on since (the CUT) has has expressed its opposition to the paro with its leader, Richard Gómez, saying that Iza doesn’t represent the Ecuadorian working class. Meanwhile, the UNES failed to achieve its goal (removing Lasso) in the parliament while being totally excluded from the dialogue between the government and the indigenous organizations, abandoning the leadership of the opposition to Leonidas Iza.

[Sadader]

Thanks for all the detail, I'm following this keenly

Additionally, as only one single vote on a muerte cruzada is possible during a legislature, there is no constitutional option remaining for the parliament to oust the president who is remaining in a precarious political position.

Interesting, by this do you mean that the legislature can invoke it only after the next elections (2025) or from 2023 as stated earlier?

As far as I understand, Lasso can still invoke it himself if he sees the National Assembly assuming functions that don't belong to it or if he perceives a political crisis (so any time, surely?).

If Lasso's fiscal reform agenda is DOA now then Ecuador will have to restructure sometime in the next few years. Any hope for a primary surplus is gone now (for 2022 definitely, probably for 2023 and 2024 on), so without primary surpluses to pay interest they'll just be burning through national savings they don't have. And it could get even worse if oil prices tank. Impossible situation for everyone.

I don't see any way this gets better and Lasso gets enough support to pass any more reforms. Do you?

[Sir John Johns]

Thanks for all the detail, I'm following this keenly

Additionally, as only one single vote on a muerte cruzada is possible during a legislature, there is no constitutional option remaining for the parliament to oust the president who is remaining in a precarious political position.

Interesting, by this do you mean that the legislature can invoke it only after the next elections (2025) or from 2023 as stated earlier?

As far as I understand, Lasso can still invoke it himself if he sees the National Assembly assuming functions that don't belong to it or if he perceives a political crisis (so any time, surely?).

From the English language version of the Ecuadorian Constitution posted on the Constitute Project website, here are the relevant articles dealing with the muerte cruzada, a process without any equivalent in the world that has never been used.

Article 130

The National Assembly shall be able to remove the President of the Republic from office in the following cases:

    For having taken up duties that do not come under his/her competence, after a favorable ruling by the Constitutional Court.
    For severe political crisis or internal unrest.

Within seventy-two (72) hours, after concluding the procedure provided for by law, the National Assembly shall issue a ruling, with a statement of its reasons, on the basis evidence for his/her defense submitted by the President of the Republic.

To proceed with the removal from office, the favorable vote of two thirds of the members of the National Assembly shall be required. If the motion to remove the President from office is adopted, the Vice-President shall take over the Office of the President of the Republic.

This power can only be exercised once during the legislative period, during the first three years of office.

Within seven days at the most after publication of the ruling to remove the President from office, the National Electoral Council shall convene for a same date legislative and presidential elections ahead of time for the rest of the respective terms of office. Installation of the National Assembly and the swearing in of the President-elect shall take place in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, on the date set by the National Electoral Council.

Article 148

The President of the Republic will be able to dissolve the National Assembly when, in his/her opinion, it has taken up duties that do not pertain to it under the Constitution, upon prior favorable ruling by the Constitutional Court; or if it repeatedly without justification obstructs implementation of the National Development Plan or because a severe political crisis and domestic unrest.

This power can be exercised only once the first three years of his/her term of office.

Within seven days at the most after the publication of the decree of dissolution, the National Electoral Council shall convene, for the same date, legislative and presidential elections for the rest of the respective terms of office.

Up until the installation of the National Assembly, the President of the Republic shall be able, upon a prior favorable ruling issued by the Constitution Court, issue decree-laws for urgent economic matters, which may be adopted or repealed by the legislative body.

So, it seems the National Assembly is now unable to invoke muerte cruzada to remove Lasso (in which case, early presidential and legislative elections would have been called to complete the presidential and legislative 2021-2025 terms and the vice president, in this case Alfredo Borrero, would have become president on an interim basis), a mechanism it could only use in the first three years of office, i.e. until May 2024 (I wrongly wrote 2023, sorry).

However, there is a legal controversy with some experts arguing the ‘once during the legislative period, during the first three years of office’ part is only applying to successful muerte cruzada process. According to these experts, if the National Assembly votes to impeach the president, early elections are hold to complete the term in office and the new parliament will no longer have the ability to remove the (re)elected president; however, if a first attempt to remove the president by the parliament has failed, there is no provision prohibiting the parliament to try once again the president. The only limitations are that it must happen during the first three years of office and the motives mentioned in the article 130 (breach of duties recognized by the Constitutional Court or severe political crisis) are invoked.

One of the constitutional lawyers mentioned in the El Universo article is explicitly indicating the article 130 is unclear (nothing new under the sun, an amendment has been passed in 2015 by Correa to correct a mistake – fundos provisionales públicos ‘provisional public funds’ wrongly used instead of fundos previsionales públicos ‘public pensions funds’ – related to the role of the Social Security Institute that was appearing in the original 2008 constitutional text submitted and approved by voters). According to him, the dispute should be go before the Constitutional Court. Surely, preferably before the National Assembly again attempts to remove Lasso (imagine if it succeeds) to spare the country a constitutional crisis.

Nothing is legally preventing Lasso to dissolve the National Assembly and rule by decree-laws but, considering his abysmal approval rating, he has not much chance to win a presidential by-election.

If Lasso's fiscal reform agenda is DOA now then Ecuador will have to restructure sometime in the next few years. Any hope for a primary surplus is gone now (for 2022 definitely, probably for 2023 and 2024 on), so without primary surpluses to pay interest they'll just be burning through national savings they don't have. And it could get even worse if oil prices tank. Impossible situation for everyone.

I don't see any way this gets better and Lasso gets enough support to pass any more reforms. Do you?

Ecuador is facing various economic problems – inflation being actually not even the most pressing one (it is the second South American country with the lowest inflation rate after Bolivia) – that may question some of the choices made by Lasso, notably in the area of international commerce where he is advocating free-trade policies (negotiations of FTA with Mexico, the US or China) as well as the persistent deficiencies of the Ecuadorian economy (the biggest ones are the heavy reliance on primary sector exports, the debilitated institutions and the size of the informal economy).

While oil exploitation and mining extraction, two sectors the government is trying to develop, are facing very strong opposition from local communities, the other driving force of the economy (agro-export sector) is also facing problems due to a resurgence of protectionism: banana sector has been severely affected by the war in Ukraine (the combined Russia and Ukraine accounted for about 25% of total banana exports) while the shrimp sector has been disturbed by the policies taken in its main market, China, on the pretext to fight the coronavirus and whose main consequence has been repeated and prolonged suspensions of exports to this country (namely, two temporary bans on imports of Ecuadorian shrimps after the discovery of alleged traces of Covid-19 on Ecuadorian frozen shrimps packages and the drastic lockdowns in China that have disorganized the movement of goods and reduced the demand for seafood). Similarly, the export of cut flowers is facing problems due to conflicts between flower producers and small farmers over land and water access (as showed by the attacks against flower plantations during the 2019 and 2022 paros). Plus I’m not sure about the sustainability of exports of what is a largely dispensable product at a time of increase in energy prices and loss of purchasing power in the US and the EU, the main markets for Ecuadorian cut-flowers.

Lasso hasn’t much room in monetary policy (Ecuador is dollarized and there is no popular support to reverse that situation to the point that last year Lasso and Arauz were attacking each other for being the candidate who would allegedly put dollarization into jeopardy) and has no working majority in the National Assembly to get ambitious reforms passed (especially not ambitious reforms inspired by the neoliberal/libertarian/anti-statist think thanks/lobbies he and members of his administration are close to). The only way to circumvent the National Assembly would be a referendum, but with not much hopes for a victory for the government. Furthermore, a defeat in such referendum would turn Lasso into a lame duck president.

So, no, I personally don’t see how could Lasso gain support to implement his agenda, especially as he has proven being prone to make political errors and miscalculations (like the attempt to arrest Iza), is appearing disconnected from the average Ecuadorian and is lacking grassroots support (CREO hasn’t been a major force in the last local elections and isn’t controlling the most influential offices on local level: mayorships of Guayaquil, Quito and Cuenca; prefectures of Guayas and Pichincha) and tools to deal with the reality of today’s Ecuador (the state apparatus is highly dysfunctional; the last census was made in 2010; opinion polls are largely useless due to ridiculously low and urban-biased samples; political parties are largely jokes and unable to represent their constituents).

But you can’t exclude some surprises as Lasso has so far proven surprisingly resilient when put into quasi-hopeless situations (he himself largely to create, to be fair): from barely going into the runoff to being elected president; managing to get his fiscal reform passed to the surprise of everybody; being able to gut the bill on abortion in case of rape; getting a first impeachment attempt derailed and surviving a second one; delaying as much as possible the removal of Guadalupe Llori; surviving one of the largest indigenous unrest in Ecuadorian recent history.

[Sir John Johns]

A government reshuffle happened last week, supposedly the consequence of the paro even if it is very hard to interpret it as demonstrating a real shift in the policies of President Lasso.

* The biggest modification is the appointment of Pablo Arosemena Marriott to replace Simón Cueva, who has been the minister for Economy and Finance since May 2021. Unlike Cueva, who has an academic background and has worked in public administration (Central Bank of Ecuador) and international organizations (IMF) before joining the Lasso government, Arosemena Marriott is for his part heavily connected to Guayaquil big business and has a more ‘traditional’ profile for a right-winger, having chaired the Chamber of Commerce of Guayaquil between 2014 and 2021 (elected at only 35). He also has been selected a member of the Young Global Leaders in 2017 and previously served as the executive director of the Fundación Ecuador Libre, a neoliberal/libertarian think tank founded in 2005 by Guillermo Lasso whichn enjoyed ties with the Cato Institute. Arosemena Marriott has previously served in the Lasso administration as the governor of Guayas, in which position he has routinely clashed with Cynthia Viteri with the mayor of Guayaquil blaming the explosion of insecurity in the province on the government and Arosemena Marriott having criticized Viteri’s police parade in Quito before a meeting with Lasso to discuss criminality problems (‘dressing up as Top Gun isn’t teamwork’). Arosemena Marriott is anyway already embroiled in a controversy after revelations made in the press about how he paid only $36.63 in income tax in 2021 (less than Leonidas Iza…), an oddity Arosemena Marriott has explained by the fact he has set aside his business activity to dedicate himself to politics. No appointment has been yet made to replace Arosemena Marriott as governor of Guayas.

* Ximena Garzón, the minister for public health since May 2021 who has been credited for the successful vaccination plan but has faced recently heavy critics over shortages in the hospitals, gave her resignation on 5 July but was replaced only two days later. The rumored pick to succeed her, Esteban Ortiz, a health expert who regularly appears on TV hinted on Twitter having been offered the portfolio by Vice President Alfredo Borrero and explained having declined it, by his own account over his view of public health differing from the one of President Lasso (if true, this is indicative of the non-existent political leverage of Borrero who can’t even impose his choices in the area he is a specialist in spite of just having entrusted with the presidency of a 'Sectorial Cabinet for Health'). Instead, the public health ministry is going to José Ruales, a surgeon with a long experience as an academic, a researcher and a consultant on public health matters who notably worked for the Pan-American Health Organization and the Ecuadorian Social Security Institute and served as a health secretary for the Metropolitan District of Quito (in the municipal administration of mayor Mauricio Rodas between 2016 and 2019) and as a deputy minister for governance and monitoring in the Public Health Ministry since May 2021.

* Marcelo Cabrera, the minister for Transportation and Public Works, is also out and has been replaced by Darío Herrera, who until then hold the portfolio of Urban Development and Housing. Unlike Cabrera, a very political profile (having been in three or four different political parties in over twenty-five years and having served as prefect of Azuay for eight years and mayor of Cuenca for nine years – in two non-consecutive terms for the later), Herrera is also coming from business sector, having worked in the real estate field. Before leaving, Cabrera posted a tweet justifying his resignation by the impossibility ‘to work without the resources from the Finances [Ministry]’ and mentioning a list of 44 public projects he has launched and are requiring a $570 million investment that ‘should not be stopped’. The tweet was subsequently deleted, adding controversy to the controversy.

* María Gabriela Aguilera Jaramillo has been promoted from deputy minister for Urban Development and Housing to full minister in replacement of Herrera. She is an architect and urban planner with no experience in electoral politics and a low-profile from what I can judged.

* Andrea Montalvo Chedraui is being appointed to head the Secretariat for Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (Senescyt) in replacement of Alejandro Ribadeneira. A work psychologist by training, Montalvo has also worked in university administration and has served as the general undersecretary of the Senescyt (the second highest office in the secretariat) since last May.

* Luis Pachala has resigned on 6 July from the head of the Secretariat for the Management and Development of Peoples and Nationalities (dealing with indigenous issues), a logical decision as he is despised by the indigenous movement and hasn’t prove very effective. No replacement hasn’t been yet made to replace Pachala.

[Sir John Johns]

The National Assembly has voted to remove Yeseña Guamaní (ID) from her office of second vice president of the legislative body. The motion, based on bogus charges of ‘breach of duties’, was approved by 83 assemblymen (the whole UNES and PSC caucus as well as rebels from PK and the ID) against 38. 6 assemblymen abstained, one cast a blank vote and the remaining ones were absent.

The two vice presidencies of the National Assembly are now vacant (the first vice presidency since now 44 days, since Virgilio Saquicela ascended to the presidency in the wake of the removal of Guadalupe Llori) and up for grabs. Additionally, the whole CAL must be renewed in the middle of the legislature (May 2023) and approved in a plenum session even if incumbents can run for reelection. So, lot of horse-trading and drama to be expected.

Especially as, last week, two complaints have been filed before the justice (one by Fernando Villavicencio, one by Virgilio Saquicela himself) over the presumed hacking of the votes of four assemblymen (three ID, one BAN) during the 28 June online session when the impeachment of President Lasso was discussed and put to vote. The four assemblymen then saw their ‘no’ votes changed into ‘yes’ votes and then requested (and obtained) a correction.

The technical report ordered by the National Assembly established that the same IP address accessed the software used (but not administered by the parliament) for vote in online sessions (Anydesk) but that the National Assembly’s own electronic voting system hasn’t been hacked. For Saquicela, the problem is lying with the assemblymen whose have the responsibility of the codes used for online vote. Villavicencio disagrees and is pointing out inconsistencies in the report, a suspicious four-day delay before the public disclosure of the report by Saquicela and the alleged invalidity of the electronic signatures on the report: for Villavicencio, the report has been altered after having been signed to cover up a hacking supposedly committed inside the National Assembly system itself.

[Sir John Johns]

https://twitter.com/fabriciovelav/status/1550180263677894664?cxt=HHwWkIC9pZKvrIM...

The plenum of the National Assembly has voted on 21 July to fill the vacant vice-presidencies of the legislative bodies:

* Marcela Holguín, 48, (UNES) has been elected the first vice president with 90 votes for (UNES, PSC and Pachakutik and ID dissidents), 36 votes against (BAN and ID) and 9 abstentions (Pachakutik). A former TV journalist on Teleamazonas (when she protested back in 2009 against the attacks of the Correa government against private-owned medias) and later on the public-owned Gama-TV (when she turned into a Correa hack), Holguín has jumped from political interviewing to electoral politics in 2017 when elected a provincial assemblywoman from Pichincha for Alianza PAIS. Siding with Correa in his feud with Moreno, she has been reelected in 2021 and has served until now as the coordinator of the UNES bench.

* Darwin Pereira (in full, Darwin Stalin Pereira Chamba), 49, (Pachakutik, belonging to the faction close to Iza) has resigned from the position of primer vocal (‘first member’) of the CAL to be elected the second vice president of the National Assembly with 93 votes for, 35 against and 6 abstentions (broadly the same vote than for the election of Holguín except that the Pachakutik official faction split itself between legislators who voted in favor like Celestino Chumpi or José Chimbo, legislators who voted against like Guadalupe Llori, Rafael Lucero or Salvador Quishpe’s alternate and legislators who abstained like Ricardo Vanegas). A lawyer from the coastal province of El Oro, Pereira has been a student leader and a local coordinator for Pachakutik. He has been elected a provincial assemblyman in 2021 and has been a supporter of the ‘ideological null vote’ in the runoff opposing Arauz to Lasso.

* Esteban Torres Cobo, 33, (PSC) has been elected by a large majority to succeed Pereira as a primer vocal, hence providing the PSC a seat in the CAL: 117 assemblymen voted in favor of Torres (UNES, PSC, Pachakutik official and dissident factions, ID dissidents, and BAN), 13 voted against (the ID official faction plus Guadalupe Llori and Fernando Villavicencio) and 4 abstained (all belonging to the Pachakutik official faction). Paradoxically, Torres is widely despised on left-wing Twitter (pro and anti-Correístas alike) for his defense of hispanidad, his passionate opposition to abortion and his connections with international far-right groups like VOX. He is also very much the embodiment of privilege, being the son of Luis Fernando Torres (mayor of Ambato in 1992-2000 as well as a deputy on several occasions), the grandson of Luis Torres Carrasco (mayor of Ambato in 1970-1974), the great-great-nephew of José Arcadio Carrasco Miño (mayor of Ambato in 1949-1953) and the descendant of Juan Elías Bucheli (mayor of Ambato in the 1900s) and having started politics at 24 when elected an alternate provincial assemblyman from Tungurahua in 2013 (the titular assemblyman was, you guess it, his own father). When Luis Fernando Torres resigned from the legislature in 2018 to unsuccessfully run for another term as mayor of Ambato, Esteban became the titular assemblyman and was reelected in that office in 2021 as the candidate of the PSC and the provincial party he has founded: Tiempo de Cambio (TC: same initial letters than Torres Cobo) ‘time of change’, a pretty ironical name as Torres Cobo is traditional Ecuadorian politics in a nutshell.

The tercer vocal (‘third member’) of the CAL, Ronny Aleaga (UNES), is retaining his position after having only received a written admonishment from the RC ethics committee. Aleaga was at the center of a major controversy after the leaking several weeks ago of photos of a party in a Miami villa where he was appearing in a swimming pool next to Xavier Jordán, a fugitive from the Ecuadorian justice investigated for corruption in a case of misappropriation and illegal sale of medical devices and suspected of laundering money from drug trafficking. Aleaga was then in Florida supposedly for a fact-finding mission and lied to his own party colleagues but he will apparently not having problems (anyway there weren’t the required votes to remove him from office).



Meanwhile, Fausto Jarrín, an UNES assemblyman from Pichincha who has previously served as Rafael Correa’s lawyer in the Sobornos 2012-2016 case, has sent his resignation, officially to dedicate himself to defend ‘the victims of hate and persecution’ (read Correístas prosecuted in corruption cases). A wave of resignations of assemblymen is expected in the following weeks as parties’ internal process to designate the candidates for next February local elections are taking place. Various legislators are tempted to try getting elected to a local office for a four-year-long term rather than continuing in a deadlocked parliament constantly under the threat of dissolution.



So, more difficulties for the government as round-table discussions are continuing with the indigenous movement. President Lasso isn’t making it easy after declarations during an interview with an Infobae journalist over the paro having been financed by drug trafficking thanks to illegal money amounting to $15 million.

As if it wasn’t enough, the right-wing president may be tarnished (depending on how things will evolve) by a scandal of corruption involving Juan José Pons, a presidential adviser and important banana grower whose house has been raided by the justice as part of an investigation over the presumed sales of public offices, in particular in the customs administration, in exchange of important sums of money (the so-called Danubio case). Eight persons have been arrested and charged with unlawful association but, unlike what has been initially reported, not Pons himself. Pons is serving (well, according to the presidency, served until last May; the fact journalists are apparently unaware of Pons’ current situation is kind of odd) as an ‘ad honorem’ (unpaid) presidential adviser for matters related to the banana sector.

A veteran politician belonging to the late Popular Democracy (DP) party, Pons has been the running-mate of Jamil Mahuad in the latter’s 1988 unsuccessful presidential bid before serving as an industry minister in the administration of Rodrigo Borja (1988-89). After a stint as a manager for Exportadora Bananera Noboa (belonging to banana tycoon and future five-time presidential candidate Álvaro Noboa) and as the founder and manager of the Costatrading banana export company, Pons came back to politics to become the president of the National Congress between 1998 and 2000. At this post he played a key role in the management of the 1999 financial crisis and the passage of the dollarization legislation. Costatrading (by then ran by Pons’ son) went bankrupt at that time and found itself unable to pay back a loan to a private bank subsequently seized by the Ecuadorian state as part of the salvage of the bank sector. As a consequence, Pons and his family have been at the center of a series of lawsuits to get the $28 million loan repaid (it never happened) and to determine whether the bankruptcy of Costatrading was fraudulent (the investigation is still pending, more than two decades thereafter). Probably not the best person to appoint a presidential adviser, even if unpaid, but whatever.