Ecuadorian elections (referendum, 21 April 2024)
Sir John Johns:
Note: I will stop updating the Ecuadorian politics and elections thread because it take me too much time, because of health problems and hardware issues making me unable to post there on a regular basis and because Ecuador’s politics is now incredibly discouraging, frustrating and pointless at a time the country is facing the overwhelming challenges of poverty, unemployment, emigration, social destructuring, narco-criminality, explosion of violence, generalized corruption, ecological crisis and institutional decay.
Ecuadorian voters will go the polls on 5 February:
* to approve or reject in an omnibus referendum eight different constitutional changes proposed by the conservative government of President Guillermo Lasso:
- question 1: amend the constitution to enable the extradition of Ecuadorian nationals charged by foreign courts with offenses related to transnational organized criminality.
- question 2: take away the power to appoint and remove prosecutors from the Judicature Council to give it to a newly created seven-member Consejo Fiscal (Prosecutorial Council) in the Fiscalía (Attorney/Prosecutor-General’s Office) whose powers would be increased. All ongoing processes organized by the Judicature Council to select, appoint and evaluate prosecutors would be declared void.
- question 3: establish a new formula to reduce the number of National Assembly members from the current 137 to about 100 by allocating one provincial assemblyman per province with one additional provincial assemblyman for every 250,000 inhabitants, two national assemblymen for every 1 million inhabitants and 1 overseas assemblyman for every 500,000 Ecuadorian nationals residing abroad.
- question 4: establish a required minimum number of members for all political movements corresponding to 1.5% of the total registered voters in the corresponding jurisdiction and impose to all political movements a periodic audit of their list of members by the National Electoral Council (CNE).
- question 5: strip the Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control (CPCCS) from its ability to designate and appoint through selection processes the senior officials in the independent state institutions, justice system and electoral branch and transfer this ability to the National Assembly. Introduced by the 2008 Constitution and making up the main entity of the so-called Fifth Power or Transparency Function, the CPCCS is (in theory but not in practice) an independent and apolitical body. Its seven members are elected by popular direct vote since 2019, after the approval of a constitutional amendment in a referendum the previous year.
All pending selection processes organized by the CPCCS would be declared void while incumbent senior officials whose appointment is current the responsibility of the CPCCS but haven’t been legally replaced on a permanent basis would remain in office until the organization of new selection processes under the supervision of the National Assembly and according to new regulations to be proposed by the president within 180 days and approved by the National Assembly within 365 days.
- question 6: abolish the direct popular election of the CPCCS counselors and give instead to the National Assembly the ability to designate the CPCCS counselors from a list drawn up by a technical commission.
- question 7: amend the constitution to enable the inclusion of water protection areas into the National Protected Areas System.
- question 8: amend the constitution to enable payments to indigenous people or nationalities, rural communities or individuals for the generation of environmental services.
* to elect the seven counselors (three on the men’s list; three on the women’s list; one of the list of indigenous, Afro-Ecuadorian and Montubio peoples and nationalities and Ecuadorians living abroad) and the seven substitute counselors making up the CPCCS whose future powers will be determined by the result to question 5 of the referendum. Voters having no knowledge whether they are electing candidates for a real and meaningful position or for a useless sinecure in an institution reduced to an empty shell: this democratic aberration is offered to you by the Ecuadorian political class.
* to elect the 23 provincial prefects (one in each province but the Galápagos) and the 23 provincial vice-prefects.
* to elect the 220 municipal mayors, each heading a canton, and the mayor of the Metropolitan District of Quito (DMQ).
* to elect the 864 urban counselors and 443 counselors making up the municipal councils in the cantons and the DMQ.
* to elect the 4,109 members of parish councils in the rural subdivisions in cantons and the DMQ.
* finally, the 10,666 electors in the parish of Sevilla Don Bosco, in the Amazonian province of Morona Santiago, will decide in a consulta (popular consultation) whether they are splitting from the canton of Morona and constituting the thirteenth canton in the province or not.
Sir John Johns:
Electoral system and provisions
Legal electoral framework
Vote is mandatory in Ecuador for voters aged 18-65 and optional for voters aged 16-17, voters over the age of 65, members of military and police forces, expats, persons with disability and illiterates. Abstaining from voting without providing a justifiable reason is punishable with a $45 penalty.
Voters are voting in gender-separated polling stations with the CNE usually providing separated results for male and female voters in addition to general results.
Prisoners who haven’t been sentenced with a final judgment are also required to vote in polling stations located in the prisons while a possibility to vote at home through a mobile ballot box moved around by two delegates of the CNE is existing since 2021 for elderly and disabled voters upon request (the Voto en Casa program benefited then to 653 persons).
409,250 out of 13,450,047 registered voters are expats having the possibility to vote abroad in consulates or (a novelty) by telematic means, but only for the referendum and the election of the CPCCS members. In 2021, countries with the largest number of Ecuadorian registered voters were Spain (179,000), the United States (121,000), Italy (50,000) and Venezuela (11,000). Predictably, turnout among abroad voters tends to be abysmal with a 70.8% abstention in the 2021 first round (under adverse conditions to be honest) and a 64.8% abstention in the 2017 first round.
Foreign nationals legally residing in Ecuador since at least five years can, upon request, vote in local and national elections.
Additionally, the sale of alcohol is prohibited from the Friday preceding Election Day to the Monday immediately following it.
According to figures provided by the CNE, distribution by age groups of the electorate is the following: 16-17 (4.7%), 18-28 (25.7%), 29-64 (56.8%), 65-99 (12.7%), over 100 (0.03%). As millennials and zoomers are constituting a sizable share of the electorate, candidates for local offices are focusing into capturing the vote of younger electors by including themes that are (supposedly) interesting these voters (environment, animals’ rights, new technologies) and flooding TikTok with an avalanche of silly short videos where they can be seen singing, dancing and doing even more idiotic things.
Jorge Yunda, the former mayor of Quito running to get back his job, is here explaining his plans for animal sheltering in front of dogs and in ‘dog language’:
https://twitter.com/lahistoriaec/status/1593102395210620928var scriptTag = document.getElementsByTagName('script');scriptTag = scriptTag[scriptTag.length-1];atlas_tweetCheckLoad(scriptTag.parentNode, "tw_0_57557625277357667", "tw_2_284694096559086310", "https://twitter.com/lahistoriaec/status/1593102395210620928");
Far less clever (yes, that’s possible) and featuring Esteban Quirola (a former prefect of El Oro province running to get back his job) is a frightening comedy sketch and with unfunny comic actors made famous by TikTok:
https://twitter.com/lahistoriaec/status/1605421167749332992var scriptTag = document.getElementsByTagName('script');scriptTag = scriptTag[scriptTag.length-1];atlas_tweetCheckLoad(scriptTag.parentNode, "tw_0_4015448781021335738", "tw_2_1486715303513153235", "https://twitter.com/lahistoriaec/status/1605421167749332992");
Whether this will convince young voters to flock to polling stations remains however to be seen. The only tangible effect of TikTok has been so far a further degradation of the already terrible general political discourse. Or maybe this is just a perception because medias are focusing on the latest TikTok antics of the candidates rather than discussing their platforms. To be honest, however, said platforms are usually a collection of extravagant and/or arch-demagogic promises, some even improvised on the campaign trail because why not. There are some purportedly left-wing candidates for mayor of Quito who are advocating Bukele-like policies to solve criminality problems in the capital despite the fact that mayors having barely any power in the area of public safety while a candidate for mayor of Guayaquil tried to revive the 2019 asinine debate about traffic fines being way too high. A few candidates even ridiculed themselves during the TV debates when appearing seemingly totally unaware of the content of their own platforms.
There is a legislation regulating the duration and financing of the election campaign, governing the use of electoral propaganda, prohibiting cases of vote-buying (at least the most egregious ones) and forbidding the use of the resources from local and national government to be diverted for electoral purposes. This is Ecuador, so like for a lot of other stuff, what is written in laws remains only mere words on paper. Nobody is respecting the electoral legislation nor pretending to do so and the CNE hasn’t showed much willingness to get the law enforced; anyway, it hasn’t the material and financial resources to fulfill this duty. Hence why you are ending with the illegal display of election posters in favor of the incumbent mayor on the most attended highway road of Guayaquil, with candidates organizing distribution of gas cylinders or lotteries or promoting their new craft beer brand for the sole purpose of gaining votes. In the same vein, President Lasso made an address in early January to announce surprise cuts on the tax on special consumption on soft drinks, cigarettes, industrial and craft beer, plastic bags and arms and ammunition (from 300% to 30% for that latter items), a temporary reduced VAT rate during four holidays and a decrease of the currency outflow tax from 4% to 2%, all of this to, allegedly, to boost economy and enable honest citizens to defend themselves against criminals.
Election of the CPCCS
The CPCCS counselors are elected for a four-year term on three different lists: a list to fill the three seats reserved for male counselors; a list to fill the three seats reserved for female counselors; and a list to fill the seat reserved for the single counselor representing indigenous, Afro-Ecuadorian and Montubio peoples and nationalities and Ecuadorians abroad. Voters are expected to vote for the three lists and can vote for as much candidates as there are reserved seats for the different lists.
The requirements to be a candidate for a CPCCS seat are including:
- a track record in social organizations, citizen participation or fight against corruption or ‘a renowned prestige demonstrating a civic commitment and a defense of general interest’
- being the holder of a legally registered tertiary degree
- evidences of a ‘notorious probity’ (i.e. not having been sentenced to jail, not having been sentenced in cases of corruption, illegal enrichment, sexual violence or hate crimes)
- having a clean tax situation (i.e. not having pending obligations with the National Revenue Service or the Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security and not having ailment debts)
- not being in a situation of conflict of interest (like being a government contractor or being the espouse or relative of an elected official, a CPCCS counselor or a CPCCS delegate in charge of verifying the requirements for running for a CPCCS seat)
- not being a military or a police member on active duty
- not being the representative of a religious cult
- not having been the member of a political party/movement or having been an elected official for a political party/movement (excluding members of local councils) since at least five years.
CPCCS counselors can run for reelection only once.
Out of 191 potential candidates, only 45 were find to meet the legal requirements and will have their names appearing on the ballot: 17 on the men’s list; 20 on the women’s list; 8 on the list of the indigenous, Afro-Ecuadorian and Montubio peoples and nationalities and Ecuadorians abroad.
The campaign of the candidates for a CPCCS seat is being entirely funded by the CNE to ensure their complete independence from political parties, central government and private companies.
In practice, most candidates have a political background or have expressed publicly political opinions (especially on social networks); others have been the personal lawyer of a prominent politician. The main opposition party, Rafael Correa’s Citizen Revolution (RC), has went as far as publishing pictures and videos of THEIR candidates for a CPCCS seat wearing jerseys of the exact same color (cyan) than the one currently used by the RC in its electoral propaganda.
https://twitter.com/SofiaEspinRC/status/1615803663565393956var scriptTag = document.getElementsByTagName('script');scriptTag = scriptTag[scriptTag.length-1];atlas_tweetCheckLoad(scriptTag.parentNode, "tw_0_18269081331344916554", "tw_2_1852713148344863643", "https://twitter.com/SofiaEspinRC/status/1615803663565393956");
Other CPCCS candidates have already declared they should be barred to take their seats if elected for such blatant violation of election rules.
Are declared elected as counselors the three most-voted candidates on the men’s and women’s lists and the most-voted on the peoples and nationalities’ list. Are becoming substitute counselors the three next most-voted candidates on the two first lists and the next most-voted candidate on the last one. The president of the CPCCS is subsequently elected by and among the seven titular counselors.
In case a counselor is removed from office or unable to serve, he is automatically replaced by the substitute counselor who has received the most votes (providing he isn’t a justice fugitive seek for financial fraud, a case that has happened no later than two months ago). In turn, the position of substitute counselor is going to the seventh most-voted candidate (third most-voted for the peoples and nationalities’ list) and so on in case additional counselors are removed from office or unable to fulfill their duties.
Such provision has already been largely abused during the 2019-2023 term, as none the 2019 most-voted CPCCS counselors have been able to complete his term in office and all seven CPCCS seats are now temporally vacant. Four presidents have succeeded one another at the head of CPCCS since 2019 with the first one (a fairly deranged and shady Catholic priest ‘on a leave’ that publicly proclaimed God told him a constituent assembly should be summoned) is rotting in jail for having used his position to sell public offices and the second one having fallen in disgrace after the revelation he engaged into disability fraud. The National Assembly has managed to remove five counselors (four in August 2019, one in October 2020) before voting to remove four additional ones (in November 2022), in a decision challenged before courts until the Constitutional Court solved the problem on 23 January 2023 (less than two weeks before election day) by ordering the removal of all seven seating counselors over their inability to comply with a previous ruling of the country’s highest court ordering the prompt appointment of a new president of the Judicature Council. The country is now looking forward (no) for the swearing-in of the substitute counselors to complete the current term that is ending on next May.
The ruling of the Constitutional Court (published less than two weeks before election day, remember) is, according to legal experts, making ineligible the five counselors running for reelection who hence couldn’t take their seats in case of victory. Not doubt, such accumulation of absurdities surrounding the 2023 election of CPCCS counselors will help decreased the number of null/blank votes compared to the previous election when an average share of 45.0% of invalid ballots was recorded (the highest number of invalid votes in any Ecuadorian election).
Election of local authorities
Provincial prefects and vice-prefects are elected on the same ticket for a four-year term by first past the post in all twenty-four provinces but the Galápagos (which are enjoying a special administrative system since the 2009 abolition of the post of provincial prefect, an office introduced in the archipelago only in 1996). In Ecuador’s largely centralized system, the prefect has reduced attributions and has mostly powers related to rural world issues: territorial and environmental planning, rural transportation systems, management of irrigation systems, agricultural policy and promotion of local economy. In urban areas, the prefect is politically superseded by the municipal mayor while at provincial level he is facing the competition of the governor, a non-elected official acting as the local representative of the president (in every province but Pichincha, where the national capital is located) in charge of applying the government policies and managing the ruling party’s business at provincial level. Governors are members of the presidential cabinet and, as such, are suffering from the same heavy turnover than government ministers.
Municipal mayors as well as the mayor of the Metropolitan District of Quito (DMQ whose mayor is enjoying some additional powers) are also elected by first past the post for a four-year term. They are heading the cantons, the second-level administrative divisions of Ecuador, that are more similar to counties than municipalities, as they are combining the seat of the canton (which can be a small hamlet as well as a densely urbanized major city) with large tracts of rural lands and, sometimes (like in the case of many Amazonian cantons but also Quito or Guayaquil and its maze of islets), protected areas or ecological reserves.
Cantons are subdivided into parishes falling into two categories: ‘urban parishes’ (generally only one single parish, made up by the cantonal seat, except for towns and cities whose urban core is divided into several urban parishes; for example, fifteen in Cuenca and Guayaquil and thirty-two in Quito) and ‘rural parishes’.
Since the approval in the 2018 constitutional referendum of an amendment reintroducing term-limits, prefects and municipal mayors are unable to be elected for more than two (consecutive or not) terms.
Each canton is also electing a municipal council (metropolitan council in the case of Quito) made up by a variable number of members depending of the population of the canton, which is in charge of electing the vice-mayor, elaborating and voting the cantonal budget and ordinances and auditing the management of the mayor. Municipal counselors are falling into two categories: urban counselors (representing the urban parishes) and rural counselors (representing the rural parishes).
Each 800 or so rural parishes is also electing a parish council (junta parroquial) in charge of electing a president of the parish council and executing policies related to territorial planning, roads and transportation, economic development and environment in coordination with the provincial prefect.
Members of municipal and parish councils are elected via a closed-list proportional representation with allocation of seats being made by using the Webster method with the urban part of the most populated cantons (Cuenca, Durán, Esmeraldas, Guayaquil, Loja, Machala, Manta, Milagro, Portoviejo, Quevedo, Quito, Riobamba and Santo Domingo) being divided into several electoral districts.
Due to an electoral law passed by the National Assembly in December 2019, the open-list system (introduced in 1997 and still applying for the last local elections of March 2019) has been terminated (the most concrete effect is that vote counting operations will be faster) as well as the seat allocation according to the D’Hondt method (introduced in 2012 by the Correa administration to increase the representation of the most-voted party, then the ruling Alianza PAIS).
Mandatory televised debates between all candidates in the 38 jurisdictions with over 100,000 registered voters (17 provinces and 21 cantons) have been organized for the first time by the CNE.
Political parties and movements
Candidates in national and local elections (except election for the CPCCS) are required to be presented by an officially registered political party (a nationwide organization required to have branches in at 50% of all provinces) or movement (a political organization with a looser structure and less stringent criteria to affiliate members which party could exist at national or sole local level). Are currently officially registered 6 parties and 11 movements at national level, 67 movements at provincial level, 173 movements at cantonal level and 19 movements at parish level.
Since the 1990s, electoral alliances between parties and movements are authorized but vary greatly from one province to another one or even from one canton to another one, making the exact counting of elected offices won by each national party in the local elections impossible.
Political parties and movements are required to register with the CNE by presenting a list of members or affiliates corresponding to at least 1.5% of the relevant electoral body (about 200,000 voters for a party registering at national level) and providing a declaration of ideological principles and a government platform. A political party or movement is supposed to automatically lose its registration in case it fails to win at least 4% of the valid votes in two pluri-personal consecutive elections, or to elect at least three representatives in the National Assembly, or to elect at least 8% of the mayors, or to elect at least one counselor in 10% of the existing cantons.
In practice, the CNE hasn’t the human, material and financial means (nor the will) to check the authenticity of citizens’ signatures appearing on membership files presented by political organizations to obtain registration. It has also withdrawn the possibility for each citizen to easily known through Internet its current party membership status, a possibility firstly introduced in 2012 (leading to massive outcry over many voters being registered without their consent and knowledge) but quickly withdrawn on the pretext of protection of privacy. Similarly, several political organizations have managed to keep their registration in spite of failing to meet the minimum requirements in term of electoral results either by abusing loopholes (the electoral law was so badly written by legislators it omitted for a time to mention ‘political movements’, hence the minimum requirements initially only applied to the sole parties; before the problem had been fixed by a new electoral law, movements that should had been de-registered after the 2019 local elections had obtained the right to participate to the 2021 elections), by going before courts, by just re-registering under a new name or even by blatant government meddling. The CNE is also making no effort to ensure the basic requirements demanded to national organizations (like having an Internet website or conducting transparent and democratic internal processes) are fulfilled.
As a result, a whole cottage industry of plagiarized and forged signatures and trafficking of records of signatures has emerged, enabling the registration of political organizations with no genuine popular support nor identified political orientation and used as convenience vehicles by crony politicians to appear on the ballot, as reported in some cases, against payment to the owners of the fake political party.
Question 4 of the referendum is supposed to address such major issue that is undermining democracy by saturating electoral space with phoney political movements and scams but also preventing the registration of more legit political options as the majority of available signatures are frozen by already registered parties and movements: a good example is how MOVER (ex-Alianza PAIS) is freezing some 988,000 signatures (7.3% of the registered electorate), all collected when Correa was the leader of the movement, while it has long ceased to represent a legit or even remotely popular political option (1.5% in the latest presidential election and 2.8% in the latest legislative election) and is so weakened it is only running candidates in a limited number of cantons (32 out of 221).
Finally, it is really important to underline the fact Ecuadorian parties are weak, barely organized and disciplined, largely if not totally de-ideologized and further undermined by the lack of loyalty from both voters and candidates: 77% (95 out of 123) of the mayors elected in 2019 and running for reelection are candidates for another party than four years ago; a rate that fells however to 16.7% (2 out of 12) for incumbent prefects, even this may have to do to the relatively unimportant nature of the office.
Referendum campaign modalities
Voters can choose to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ at each eight questions. Traditionally, referendum questions have all been approved or rejected in block with generally relatively few differences from one question to another one. The only exception has been during the 1994 referendum when the proposal to give legislators the ability to control state budget was roundly defeated (83.4% of ‘no’) while other proposals passed.
Political parties and movements and social organizations have to register with the CNE to campaign in favor or against the whole eight questions. Only Lasso’s party, CREO, and Avanza (a fake social-democratic tiny party) are campaigning for the ‘yes’. Meanwhile, the Citizen Revolution (RC), the National Teachers Union (UNE) and its political branch – the leftist Popular Unity (UP) (both strong opponents to Correa when the later was president) –, the General Union of Workers of Ecuador (UGTE, one of the main unions), as well as the Ecuadorian Socialist Party (PSE, an irrelevant outfit of academics cosplaying either as radical Marxist revolutionaries either as moderate social-liberal third-wayers depending of the faction controlling the leadership and the political circumstances) are registered to campaign for the ‘no’. While not officially registered to campaign, the CONAIE main indigenous organization is de facto supporting the ‘no’.
This is the referendum campaign in which the lowest number of organizations have registered, compared to 2011 and 2018, the sign of the decline and decay of political parties and social organizations like the unions.
Sir John Johns:
Stakes of the referendum
What President Lasso is trying to sell
The referendum is presented by President Lasso as a way to solve a series of urgent problems, in first place the recent explosion in violence and crime in relation with drug trafficking and the (real and partly documented but hard to assess) penetration of judicial system and other state institutions (army, police, local governments, political parties) by drug cartels and criminal organizations. I will probably elaborated on this later, because this is very important, but the homicide rate is now 25,5 per 100,000 inhabitants (a number hiding large regional disparities), credible accusations of collusion with drug cartels have been recently made against judges and politicians and the election campaign has been characterized by an unprecedented series of attacks against candidates (a candidate for mayor has been murdered few days ago, another one injured by motorcycle hitmen and yet another one saw his home target by bomb attacks twice) in a country which has until now been relatively sparred by violence (at least compared to other Latin American countries), be it politically-motivated or not.
Other problems supposed to be addressed by the referendum are including the ongoing institutional chaos derived from the intense struggle involving the government, the National Assembly, the judiciary power and the CPCCS over appointments of senior officials (the pugna de poderes ‘struggle of powers’), the incredible debility of political organizations and the alleged lack of representativeness of the parliament. The two last questions of the referendum, which are barely discussed, have been included to pay lip service to indigenous and environment-friendly voters as social conflicts over environment-related issues continue unabated.
Four additional proposals have been axed by the Constitutional Court for being unconstitutional, badly written or necessitating a prior approval vote in the parliament: one to enable the army to assist the police in the fighting against organized crime, one to automatically allocate assets seized to organized crime to education programs, one to typify extortion as an ‘organized crime’ and hence increase sentence for such offense and finally one to grant tax deduction for the employment of people over 45. The first proposal could still go before voters in the near future as there is a reasonable chance a parliamentary majority could be reached to put it to referendum.
No needs to prolong the suspense over the pertinence of such constitutional changes: none will fix any of the major issues faced by Ecuador. At best they are largely insufficient, otherwise they are useless or even counterproductive. Decreasing the number of legislators to pretend making them more representative is of course totally ludicrous and some have warned about the too high expectations created by the government in regard of extradition of criminals (possibly confused with expulsion of criminals in the minds of some voters) as the magic bullet to solve criminality, a strategy that could spectacularly backfired on the president if no significant improvement in that area happens thereafter. More generally, state institutions are deficient not much because of lack of inadequate legislation but because of lack of financial and material resources and an absence of efficient, transparent and honest management practices. The government has largely ignored that issues, doing little to address corruption and focusing on the reduction of the state budget at the expense of public investments.
Towards a take-over of the institutions by the government?
The real objective of the referendum is to relaunch the ailing presidency of Lasso who has announced he will run for reelection in 2025 in spite of low approvals (currently standing between 29.3% and 12.6% depending of the polling company). A victory will give him oxygen and strengthen his position as he is facing a hostile National Assembly and an indigenous movement energized by the success of the paro (strike combined with road blockades and street protests in the major urban centers of the highlands) of last June that cemented the indigenous organizations, and chiefly the CONAIE, as the only political force able to organize mass demonstrations and force the government to backtrack and start negotiations on the basis of a relatively coherent and comprehensive policy agenda (something Ecuadorian political parties are clearly largely unable to do these days).
With that in mind, question 5 appears as the most relevant ones as its approval would give the president a strong advantage in his showdown with the National Assembly over control of the key state positions currently appointed by the CPCCS and, potentially, could ensure him a full control over the non-elected state institutions until the end of his 2021-25 term in office.
While currently one needs a simple majority in the CPCCS (four out of seven counselors) to have an absolute control over the appointments of senior officials, in case of victory of the ‘yes’ to question 5, the responsibility to designate senior officials would be transferred to to the National Assembly where the government is betting on having more leeway to obtain what it wants thanks to vote-buying, blackmail, political horse-trading and the possibility to not rely on a very few possibilities of coalition.
More importantly, the devil is in the details, as transitional dispositions included in the annex to question 5 are not only giving the president the initiative to draft the new legal framework regulating future appointments (a framework still needing the approval of the National Assembly) but they also providing that senior officials in charge on an interim/transitory basis at the time of the proclamation of the referendum results will remain in office during the whole transition period, a period which could theoretically extend up to twenty-one months after the referendum, not including the additional time necessary to organize new selection processes under the supervision of the National Assembly and according to the new legal framework.
The government has obviously taken advantage of a change in the CPCCS majority in February 2022 (thanks to an internal ‘coup’ that installed a pro-government president) to place as much as possible of its creatures at key positions and block the appointments of people it considers as hostile, provoking in its furious struggle with the National Assembly an impossible legal mess and an institutional chaos. Especially contentious were the designations of a new superintendent of banks (the first appointee, in spite of having proposed by the government, was subsequently barred from taking his office by that same government) and a new president of the Judicature Council, the latter as I have mentioned having conducted by the removal of all seven CPCCS counselors (pro- and anti-government factions alike) by the Constitutional Court over their delaying tactics to avoid the appointment of a new office-holder.
So, to summarize, a victory of the ‘yes’ in question 5 (and, to a lesser extent, question 2) will help Lasso in his attempt to take control of most of the state apparatus and justice system, the same way the 2018 referendum enable Moreno to purge his pro-Correa rivals from the key state positions and in the same way the 2011 referendum enabled Correa to ‘get his hands’ in the judiciary system.
The rest of the questions are about popular (or allegedly so) proposals hard to publicly oppose, in first place the possibility to extradite Ecuadorian criminals, put on the referendum ballot to help pass the most important but less ‘sexy’ proposals.
Future presidential and legislative by-elections?
Furthermore, political observers are beginning to discuss about the possibility if not the probability that, whatever the results of the referendum will be, will be triggered in future months the so-called muerte cruzada (‘crossed death’), a unique mechanism that can be decided either by the president either by the National Assembly (by a two-third vote) and will force joint legislative and presidential by-elections to complete the remaining of the 2021-2025 term. In case the muerte cruzada is triggered by the president, this one is remaining in office until the by-election and has the possibility to pass decree laws in urgent economic matters without the National Assembly having a say (only the Constitutional Court could reject said decrees in case unconstitutionality): otherwise, the president is removed (but still able to run in the presidential by-election) and replaced by the vice president on a temporary basis. The muerte cruzada can’t be triggered in the last year of the normal presidential/legislative term.
A large victory in the referendum could then emboldened the president to try getting rid of a hostile and ungovernable parliament or, conversely, a large defeat could decide the parliamentary opposition to remove Lasso on the grounds he has lost popular support (the latter case being however less plausible as it is better to deal with a severely weaken president than risking losing your seats in by-elections).
The strategy of Lasso to win the referendum has been very simple and you may already have guessed it because it isn’t particularly imaginative: focusing mostly on the (genuine) issues of criminality, gang wars and drug trafficking and accusing politicians, parties and organizations campaigning for the ‘no’ of being accomplices of criminals if not criminals themselves.
The president has been helped by the corruption scandals hurting various opposition politicians as well by the recent allegations (some serious, some totally frivolous) of the existence of ties between drug-trafficking and money-laundering networks and opposition leading politicians or candidates, in first place the RC which is embroiled in some particularly embarrassing scandals. In a series of public/media shows, the government and Fernando Villavicencio (an investigative journalist and an independent legislator close to the Lasso administration who is chairing the oversight commission in the National Assembly) have released the names of several candidates for local elections supposedly financed by drug trafficking and other criminal activities like illegal mining. A list of twenty-eight candidates (21 candidates for mayor, 2 candidates for prefect and 4 candidates for a seat in local councils) has been delivered by the interior minister to the Fiscalía but not publicly disclosed (even if several names leaked in the last weeks in the press are surely appearing on it).
Additionally, Lasso has exploited the extreme unpopularity of the political parties (in an advanced stage of decomposition) and the discredited do-nothing National Assembly (hence the demagogic argument about reducing the number of legislators ‘to save money’).
A discredited National Assembly
The approvals of the legislative power have indeed sunk into single-digit territory, the consequence of its endless bickering and odd internal agreements that make no sense from an ideological and policy-making standpoint.
To sum up things, so far the main events that happened during the ongoing legislature have been:
- the conclusion of an ‘impunity for governability’ deal between Lasso’s ‘right-wing’ CREO, Correa’s ‘socialist’ RC and the ‘right-wing’ Social Christian Party (PSC) to share the leadership positions in the National Assembly
- the last-minute collapse of said deal and a reversal in alliances that instead shared leadership positions between CREO, the ‘social-democratic’ ID and the ‘left-wing’ indigenous Pachakutik (PK) and gave the presidency of the National Assembly to this latter party
- the removal from office of the ID vice-president of the National Assembly convinced of having forced her advisers to pay back their wages to cover her own personal expenses
- a cascade of party-switching and party expulsions, to the point that at least 21 (out of 137) legislators are no longer members of the party that sponsored their candidacies in 2021
- the unexpected and ‘unexplained’ abstention of the RC in a vote on a government-sponsored tax law slammed as ‘neoliberal’ by the left-wing parties which raise suspicions over shady backroom deal between the RC and the government over the judicial problems faced by the RC leaders
- the breakup of the PK caucus between a radical wing and a more moderate, pro-government, wing
- the breakup of the ID caucus and party between two rival wings that are waging war against each other in spite of nobody being able to tell for what they are exactly standing for
- the removal of the PK president of the National Assembly and her replacement by a renegade from the pro-government caucus installed thanks to an alliance between the RC, the PSC, the radical wing of PK, one of the halves of the ID and various independents, after a never-ending process that also involved interference from the justice
- a failed attempt to impeach President Lasso that took place in the middle of accusations of hacking of the National Assembly’s electronic voting system (on behalf of the opposition) and vote-buying (on behalf of the government)
- the new parliamentary majority voting to remove four CPCCS counselors, a decision immediately canceled by a provincial judge who also ordered public apologies and the installation in the National Assembly of a plaque stating ‘no state power is above constitutional control’ (the plaque was removed after a week and the judge is now on the way of being dismissed)
As the consequence, the government has to constantly resort to horse-trading with the various parliamentary factions to get its agenda passed, with meager results. It does not help that not only the parliamentary schedule is clogged with requests for impeachment proceedings against a collection of ministers or senior officials (some no longer in charge since weeks). Yet the legislators still find time to waste on debating and voting a truckload of symbolic non-binding motions and useless ridiculous resolutions that further undermine their credibility:
https://twitter.com/BancadaID/status/1611147772148727808var scriptTag = document.getElementsByTagName('script');scriptTag = scriptTag[scriptTag.length-1];atlas_tweetCheckLoad(scriptTag.parentNode, "tw_0_7824495571394623348", "tw_2_58009509776019064", "https://twitter.com/BancadaID/status/1611147772148727808");
The resolution instituting a ‘national day of bizcocho [some sort of local cake], dulce de leche and leaf chess’ is just the sixteenth one passed by the current parliament to create a (quickly forgotten) ‘special day’ to celebrate some random stuff. Equating already the record established by the previous legislature which actually kind of cheated with the institution of a ‘day of national cycling’ followed, one year later but for another day, of the institution of a ‘day of Ecuadorian cycling’.
The twilight of political parties
The credibility of political parties and movements is hardly any better as exemplified by the fact that all four most-voted rivals of Lasso in the 2021 presidential have since either left their parties (Yaku Pérez who left PK to start a new party he failed to register; Xavier Hervas who left the ID in the middle of its insane civil war; Pedro Freile who left AMIGO and is now running as the Ecuadorian Socialist Party candidate for mayor of Quito, eighteen months after having signed the far-right Madrid Charter warning of the dangers of ‘communism’) either are on the verge of being expelled from it (Andrés Arauz, even this isn’t yet settled).
At local level, this is even worse: 77% (95 out of 123) of the mayors elected in 2019 and running this year for reelection are candidates for a different party than four years ago, a rate that however fell to only 16.7% (2 out of 12) for incumbent prefects running for reelection (this may have to do with the fact that the office of provincial prefect is relatively less publicized and traditionally not a stepping stone towards more important positions).
Caso Encuentro, a game-changer?
So, every Ecuadorian pollsters (which have however a terrible track record due to persistent difficulties reaching young, poor and rural voters; also because most are charlatans/frauds) have predicted a victory of the ‘yes’ in the eight referendum questions but with a sizable share of undecided voters.
But, just three weeks before election day, came the ‘January surprise’: revelations by La Posta (a sh**tty infotainment website but the accusations are partly supported by – edited – audios), about the existence of a wide-reaching corruption scheme inside the sector of public companies and headed by Danilo Carrera, no less than the brother-in-law and former business partner of President Lasso. Somehow also embroiled in the scandal is Ronny Aleaga, a leading RC legislator already facing accusations of ties with narco-traffickers, a factor that is impeding the Correísta movement to fully exploit the case: how the RC will manage to conduct the recently created parliamentary inquiry on the case without mentioning the name of Aleaga who is explicitly mentioned in an audio as ‘an operator of mine’ by one of the participants of the corruption scheme?
In spite of the lousy reputation of La Posta which may using the story to avenge itself from its removal from public television (after the airing of a segment in which the two asshole presenters made racist insults about Leonidas Iza and throw darts at a photo of the CONAIE leader put on a target, great journalism as you can see), the government is currently struggling to get away from the scandal. It isn’t helped by the abrupt resignation of the secretary for anti-corruption policy, the leaking of further audios possibly implicating the foreign minister, the flight from the country of several protagonists of the case and the opening of a formal investigation by the Fiscalía which has conducted a series of searches in the case it trollishly choose to name Caso Encuentro forcing the Lasso administration, which used the Gobierno del Encuentro (‘Government of the Encounter’) as its motto to quickly change it for just ‘government of Ecuador’.
Could the scandal change the outcome of the referendum vote?
Sir John Johns:
Political parties
There are seventeenth parties and movements registered at national level of which only six or seven (namely RC, CREO, PSC, Pachakutik, ID and, arguably, PSP and UP) can be considered as ‘genuine’ by incarnating a legit political orientation (providing you aren’t too much demanding) and/or by representing a relatively important social or ethno-cultural category of the population. All others can safely been considered as opportunist organizations not too dissimilar to Brazil’s Centrão, without a solid and lasting semblance of ideology, lacing a loyal voting base and relying exclusively or almost exclusively on clientelism and influence of local bosses to gain votes.
I will describe those parties, indicate the number attributed to each by the CNE (and widely used election campaign as well as in press reports when referring to multi-party alliance), provide the results their national list obtained in the 2021 legislative election (the least bad measure to assess their strength, even if not without caveats) with regional breakdown, their official number of members and affiliates (according to this Primicias article), the number of candidates for prefects and mayors they elected in 2019 and the number of candidates they are running this year for prefects and mayors (according to a bit old, so probably not entirely accurate, Primicias article).
The four main regions: Costa (cyan), Sierra (orange), Amazon or Oriente (green), Galápagos (violet)
Map of the winning party by parish in the 2021 election of national assemblymen (legislators elected on the national list) when the results were the following:
Union for Hope (UNES) 32.2%
Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement (PK) 16.8%
Democratic Left (ID) 12.0%
Social Christian Party (PSC) 9.7%
Creating Opportunities Movement (CREO) 9.6%
Honesty Alliance 3.8%
Alianza PAIS 2.8%
All others under 2.5%
Union for Hope was the alliance between Correa’s then party (Fuerza Compromiso Social, renamed RC few months after) and the Democratic Center, a phoney party owned by Jimmy Jairala, a businessman/radio anchor and one of the most opportunist politician in Ecuador who has since broke with the RC to start his own bid for mayor of Guayaquil. The Honesty Alliance was the anti-corruption alliance between the Ecuadorian Socialist Party (PSE) and a defunct center-right party (Concertación) that got its top candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, elected.
Creating Opportunities Movement (CREO)
Party’s list number: 21
Number of members and affiliates: 179,773
Prefects elected in 2019: 1 (incl. 1 in alliance)
Mayors elected in 2019: 34 (incl. 25 in alliance)
Candidates for prefects: 20 (incl. 17 in alliance)
Candidates for mayors: 210 (incl. 173 in alliance)
Results in 2021 election of national assemblymen: 9.6% (Costa: 8.2%; Sierra: 11.8%; Oriente: 7.3%; Galápagos: 15.2%; expats: 8.5%)
Party history
CREO (an acronym meaning both ‘I create’ and ‘I believe) is the creation and, for all purposes, the personal vehicle of Guillermo Lasso, a former executive president of Banco de Guayaquil (one of the largest banks of the country) who had briefly served as an economic ‘super-minister’ at the time of the 1999 bank crisis. While Lasso occasionally mentions he has no degree and postures as a self-made-man, he certainly benefited from the help of his brother-in-law Danilo Cabrera (now at the center of the corruption scandal in public companies), a wealthy businessman who served as a minister under dictator Guillermo Rodríguez Lara, in his business ventures and later political ambitions; on a side note, Xavier Lasso, Guillermo’s own brother, served as a UN ambassador under Correa after a career as a TV journalist and was at one point considered as a potential presidential candidate for Correa’s party in the 2021 election. All facts highlighting how Ecuadorian politics remain determined by kinship networks and how the borders between business, medias and politics are blurred.
CREO was established in 2012 to provide an alternative to the hegemonic Alianza PAIS and enable a return to power of the classical right, largely discredited by the 1999 bank crisis and excluded from government since 2002 to the benefit of anti-establishment parties. The party is advocating small-government and ‘concrete’ solutions in economic matters while defending very conservative positions in social area (a member of the Opus Dei, Lasso is a staunch opponent to abortion, even in case of rape) and penal populist measures to fight crime (campaigning in 2021 on the unfulfilled promise of loosening gun laws and now on extradition of narcos). At the same time, it has also professed some sort of compassionate conservatism and opening towards indigenous communities (Lasso’s initial vice-presidential pick in 2013 was a prominent Pachakutik leader who had became one of the first indigenous mayors in the country) as well as a commitment to the rule of law and liberal democracy and an opposition to caudillismo and excessive personalization of power.
Such postures, now for a part contradicted by Lasso’s exercise of power, enabled the CREO candidate to be elected president in 2021 (after two unsuccessful bids in 2013 and 2017) in spite of a disastrous result in the first round as Lasso pivoted before the runoff to a posture of champion of democracy, rule of law, dialogue and understanding to attract indigenous, ecologist and feminist sectors which had been progressively alienated by the policies and style of government of Correa, well helped by the little efforts furnished by the former president to recapture those sectors.
Lasso’s party has remained to some extent apart from the excess of conspiracy theories, ‘anti-communist’ hysteria and abuse of divisive and racist rhetoric that are characterizing several other South American leading right-wing parties (like the personal cults of Uribe, Fujimori and Bolsonaro) and Lasso has immediately tweeted his support to President Lula and for Brazilian democracy on 8 January 2023. There is no guarantee this will last forever, especially in face of the threat represented by potential future indigenous protests.
The Lasso administration has largely pissed off, not only indigenous (by briefly arresting Leonidas Iza on a dubious legal basis and delivering little in term of fight against poverty and malnutrition), ecologist (by continuing and extending the extractivist policies of Correa and Moreno) and feminist (by rendering de facto impossible abortion in case of rape after having promised to respect the Constitutional Court’s ruling ordering its legalization) voters but also a part of his voting core base by increasing taxes, failing to prevent the vote of an amnesty for 2019 indigenous protesters, being unable to address the criminality problem and having quickly dropped his uncompromising posture to engage negotiations with the indigenous movement.
Electoral support
The main problem, exemplified by the most-voted list map is that CREO’s voting base isn’t very large and concentrated in the large urban centers (in particular in the highlands) as demonstrated by the fact that CREO only came ahead in a handful of parishes of which only one (in the Galápagos) is a rural one.
Broadly speaking, support for CREO is relatively evenly distributed (at least compared to other large parties) with no a that large regional divide (11.8% in the Sierra against 8.2% in the Costa) but at a pretty low level (often in single digit), hence producing a map not easy to decipher.
Best results, by far, were in the affluent parts of the major cities of the highlands (38.8% in Rumipamba and 35.1% in Iñaquito in Quito; 26.1% in Atocha Ficoa, Ambato) and in the wealthy suburbs of Quito (40.7% in Cumbaya) and Guayaquil (45.4% in La Puntilla in the canton of Samborondón) comprising many gated communities, all areas also corresponding with high rate of self-identification as white (in a country where the vast majority of the population is self-identifying as mestizo).
It slightly over-performed in the Galápagos (15.2%), the urban areas as I said (the difference between Cuenca and rural Azuay in particular is striking), in the two border highland provinces of Carchi (10.0%) and Loja (10.6%) which shared both a conservative political traditional and a very low level of indigenous self-identification (bar Saraguro, Loja, where precisely CREO is irrelevant). CREO did also well in the urban core of the city of Esmeraldas (from 12.4% to 15.5%), in the small towns of the Amazon (11.7% in Zamora; 12.4% in Macas; 10.7% in Tena; 12.7% in Puyo) contrasting there with the marked lower support in the larger towns of that region (6.2% in Nueva Loja; 8.4% in Puerto Francisco de Orellana), in the inner part of El Oro where mining and domestic-market agriculture are the dominant activities and in the less rural/remote (and less indigenous) part of Bolívar province, around Guaranda-San Miguel. In Guayaquil, the party got lowest support in the urban low-income neighborhoods (7..2% in Ximena, 6.2% in Febres Cordero, 5.5% in Pascuales) compared to the wealthier downtown (15.7% in the part of Tarqui parish included in Guayas’s third electoral district). Worst results are almost systematically in the indigenous-populated areas with a few notable exceptions (in Napo and Orellana where the right-leaning PSP of former president Lucio Gutiérrez used to be very strong).
Goals in the local elections
CREO has basically gave up the local elections to focus instead on the referendum campaign. Anyway, the party has a particularly weak local infrastructure with a dismal number of incumbent mayors and (like on national level where no strong potential successor to Lasso has so far emerged) is lacking strong names to run.
Hence the biggest prizes like the prefectures of Guayas, Manabí and Azuay (respectively first, third and fifth most populated provinces) as well as the mayorship of Quito are totally out of reach. In Guayaquil, the country’s economic hub and the rival of Quito, CREO isn’t even running candidate for mayor nor lists for municipal council seats.
The right-wing party may have a shot of winning the prefecture of Pichincha (second most-populated province where is located Quito) where its candidate, Eduardo del Pozo, is a former vice-mayor of Quito, as well as the mayorship of Esmeraldas, where it is running Frickson Erazo, an Afro-Ecuadorian retired soccer player who is campaigning under police protection since two successive bomb attacks against his home and the killing of his cousin by hit-men in October-November 2022. Erazo could benefited from his celebrity status, sympathy from voters and the inability of the successive left-wing municipalities (Correísta and UP) to extend access to running water.
A victory of Paúl Carrasco, the leader of the irrelevant (Carrasco humiliated himself in the 2021 presidential by ending last out of sixteen candidates with 0.2%) Total Renovation Party (RETO), who is running with the support of an alliance including CREO can possibly win in Cuenca (third largest city, in Azuay province).
Sir John Johns:
Citizen Revolution (RC)
Party’s list number: 5
Number of members and affiliates: 204,854
Prefects elected in 2019: 2 (none in alliance)
Mayors elected in 2019: 0
Candidates for prefects: 22 (incl. 9 in alliance)
Candidates for mayors: 185 (incl. 88 in alliance)
Results in 2021 election of national assemblymen: 32.2% (Costa: 42.2%; Sierra: 21.1%; Oriente: 20.3%; Galápagos: 18.0%; expats: 44.1%)
Party history
The Citizen Revolution is the latest incarnation of Rafael Correa’s personalist movement and this is the fourth election in a row that Correísmo is running under a different name and using a different color: Alianza PAIS label and electric green in 2017; Fuerza Compromiso Social (FCS) and cyan in 2019; United for Hope (UNES) and orange in 2021 and so now RC and red and cyan.
As exemplified by the choice of the party’s name deriving from a widely used label to describe the original project since the 2006 campaign (Revolución Ciudadana, whose acronym – RC – can also refer to the leader’s name, Rafael Correa – there even were plans by Correa’s brother and sister to launch in 2007 a party named Revolución Ciudadana Democrática whose initials match the ones of Correa’s full name: Rafael Correa Delgado) and the omnipresence of the former president in the RC electoral campaign (the face of Correa is absolutely everywhere in the party’s electoral propaganda and candidates are widely sharing pictures and videos of themselves appearing alongside Correa), the RC and its forerunners (Alianza PAIS and FCS) are extremely personalist movements, the term of personal cult wouldn’t be too much exaggerated. Tellingly, on the movement’s website, the first ever entry under the ‘We Are RC5’ category is ‘Rafael Correa’.
A good illustration of the heavy personalism in the RC: a campaign video of its candidate for mayor of Cuenca, widely mocked as a ventriloquist act of Correa considering how much reduced time the poor candidate has to open his mouth and how he looks like inanimate during the largest part of the video.
https://twitter.com/RoqueOrdone/status/1615148163161116672var scriptTag = document.getElementsByTagName('script');scriptTag = scriptTag[scriptTag.length-1];atlas_tweetCheckLoad(scriptTag.parentNode, "tw_0_954172745171317866", "tw_2_1082830367524719061", "https://twitter.com/RoqueOrdone/status/1615148163161116672");
The political trajectory of Rafael Correa strongly contrasts with ones of other left-wing leaders in South America Latin American as he neither came from trade unionism/guerrilla/social organizations (like Lula, Morales, Mújica, Castillo, Petro, Boric or Dilma) nor from traditional electoral politics (like Tabaré Vázquez, the Kirchners or AMLO) as he has build all his subsequent political career from his position of economy minister in the government of Alfredo Palacio, an office he was appointed in April 2005 while a complete unknown with no previous political party activism. A university professor of economics by training, Correa had been previously involved in economic intellectual circles opposed to the 2000 dollarization before being appoint an economic adviser in the cabinet of Palacios, then the vice-president of Ecuador. The young economy minister (43 at the time) used his government position to establish himself as a household by strong declarations against the IMF and the World Bank even if his short time as minister (he resigned in August 2005) did enable him to achieve much. Immediately after his resignation, Correa prepared a presidential bid with some help with several private medias (notably Ecuavisa where was employed star journalist and former presidential candidate Freddy Ehlers who would later served as a minister under Correa) and, running on an anti-establishment platform, came ahead of the candidates of the discredited traditional parties to easily triumph in the runoff over Álvaro Noboa, a fat lazy polarizing demagogue owing his own political career to privilege (yeah, some disturbing parallels to be made with Macron’s own trajectory). As a result, Correa’s first party, the Alianza PAIS, was largely built on the campaign trail and expanded for a great part thanks to the influx of veteran politicians from pre-existing parties both on the left and on the right.
Correa’s style of government has been described as techno-populism, mixing hyper-presidentialism, micro-management and unwillingness to delegate powers of the head of the state, an open disregard for parliament, political parties, medias, social organizations, a bellicose anti-oligarchic rhetoric and, in sharp contrast with traditional populism, a pretension to incarnate ‘progress’ (hence the ‘progressive’ label largely used by Correísta movement to self-identify) and to derive its political legitimacy from technical expertise, rationality and competence all validated by academic credentials. Therefore the over-representation of academics (especially economists who displaced bankers and businessmen as the main architects of economic policies), technicians and tertiary education graduates among Correa’s numerous ministers, a technocratic feature reinforced by the lecturing tone and PowerPoint presentation often used by the president during his weekly TV-show.
The excessively personalist style of government of Correa and organization of his administration (plethora and large turnover of ministries; the institution of an extra layer in the government management, the ‘coordinating ministries’; sidelining of the party, parliament and even, towards the end, the ministers themselves from the decision-making process to the benefit of the president and his close inner circle of Guayaquil’s friends and former schoolmates) resulted in the impossibility for a strong contender to succeed Correa to emerge and, ultimately, the break-up of Correa’s Alianza PAIS.
Correa being enabled to run for reelection in 2017, it was decided the presidential ticket would be constituted by Lenín Moreno (vice-president in 2007-13 who had remained a popular figure due to his personal background, his affability, his personal association with a concrete policy – inclusion of disabled persons – and his 2013-16 stint as a UN envoy for disabled persons that kept him away from Correa’s rather bad third term in office) would be the candidate for president with Jorge Glas (an uncharismatic and unlikable figure who served as vice president in 2013-17 and spearheaded the major infrastructures program as well as a former pupil of Correa in the Guayaquil’s boy scouts). As much unbelievable it can be sound now, Moreno was supported by the left and the pro-labor wings of the Alianza PAIS while Glas, Correa’s designated but unelectable heir, received the endorsement of party’s sectors close to Guayaquil business circles.
After a difficult campaign, plagued by rumors of disagreements and disputes between the two Alianza PAIS running-mates and a series of revelations about the corruption practices of Glas, Moreno defeated Lasso in the presidential runoff by a very close margin. Once sworn in office, he lost no time getting rid of his embarrassing vice-president who got charged and sentenced in the Odebrecht corruption case (the comptroller-general, Carlos Pólit, also involved in the case had fled Ecuador even before Moreno’s inauguration). The arrest and removal of Glas precipitated the rupture between Correa (living in a self-imposed exile) and Moreno. The majority of the Alianza PAIS caucus and local elected officials sided with Moreno enabling him to take control of the party leadership, infrastructure and brand and pushed the followers of Correa outside the Alianza PAIS.
In 2018, the approval in a referendum of a constitutional amendment instituting a strict two-term limits for executive office followed by a sentencing of Correa himself to eight years in jail in a case of illegal campaign financing rendered the return of the former president in electoral politics very unlikely. After having tried for about eighteen months to govern to the left of the Correa administration in its latest months in office, Moreno rapidly shifted rightwards (more to the right than at any time of the Correa government), alienated most of his supporters, saw his approvals collapsing and basically renounced to rule the country. Meanwhile, the Alianza PAIS, left without a strong leadership, sank in electoral oblivion, suffering first a major defeat in the 2019 local elections before obliterated in the 2021 general elections.
In the meantime, Correístas found refuge in a phoney party (Fuerza Compromiso Social) whose founder, an ally of Moreno, happened to have been sent to jail for corruption, and used it as an electoral vehicle for the 2019 local elections during which the pro-Correa candidates, isolated by a ‘cordon sanitaire’, won two prefectures (Pichincha and Manabí) but failed to capture any mayorship. For the 2021 national elections, the Correa-controled FCS brokered an alliance (UNES) with the Democratic Center (CD), a movement owned by Jimmy Jairala, a businessman and radio anchorman from Guayaquil with a zigzag political career marked by blatant opportunism. The UNES presidential ticket was made up by persons representing the two main wings of Correísmo: Andrés Arauz, a young technocrat with an economics background for the academics and senior officials (dubbed as the ‘golden bureaucracy’) generally based in Quito in an attempt to repeat the Correa 2006 campaign; Carlos Rabascall, a former TV journalist and the head of public relations firm, for the Guayaquil business community members favorable to Correa. Neither had previously be a candidate in a popular election. As we know, Arauz came ahead in the first round with 32.7% (down from 39.4% for Moreno in the 2017 first round) and was defeated in the runoff for a series of reasons including the campaign for ‘ideological null vote’ promoted by the CONAIE and unions, embarrassing revelations over Arauz’s professional background and constant interference in the UNES candidate’s campaign by Correa who, from his exile, made offensive anti-abortion comments and threats of vengeance against members of civil society who participated in the 2018 referendum campaign in favor of the ‘yes’ (including chess player Carla Heredia and LGBT rights activists Pamela Troya and Silvia Buendía).
Purged from its last founding members, the FCS was renamed the Citizen Revolution in August 2021 with Marcela Aguiñaga, a former assemblywoman and environment minister under Correa, as its national president.
The RC is defining itself as a left-wing progressive political movement defending the construction of a socialism of the good living (Socialismo del Buen Vivir) model unique to Ecuador and standing for feminism, ecologism, plurality, humanism, anti-colonialism and anti-capitalism. Ideologically speaking, its ideario is pretending drawing inspiration from the thoughts of Simón Bolívar and Eloy Alfaro (liberal and anticlerical president of Ecuador in 1895-1901 and 1906-11), scientific socialism (‘especially the Latin American one’), the knowledge and world view of indigenous nationalities, the Liberation Theology and Church’s social doctrine, feminism, decoloniality, environmentalism and ‘Latin American popular nationalism’, among others.
All ideas largely contradicted by the presidency of Correa which saw a progressive abandonment of its promises and commitments, especially during the third term in office (2013-17) of Correa when the end of commodities boom and collapse in oil prices conducted the president to introduce measures that definitively spell the end of the interventionist and nationalist economic model and set the ground for the subsequent Moreno’s right-wing turn: plans to privatize Petroecuador’s gas stations and sell state assets to finance the reconstruction in Manabí province, hardly hit by an earthquake in 2016; abolition of the state obligation to cover 40% of the Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security (IESS) expenses; acceptance of the payment of a $979 million indemnity to the US Oxy oil company whose contract had been irregularly terminated by Correa when a minister; signature of a free-trade agreement with the European Union; and finally the return of the IMF missions in Ecuador. This went hand in hand with the opening of the Yasuní park to oil extraction, the dissolution of the UNE teachers union and increased repression against indigenous organizations and communities, the passage of a gag law against medias and a social conservative turn with the promotion of abstinence-only sex education and the passage of tougher drug laws. In spite of his anti-imperialist and nationalist rhetoric, Correa never made attempts to reverse dollarization and Arauz campaigned on the promise to strengthen dollarization, which according to him would be at risk in case of a victory of Lasso.
Electoral support
The 2021 elections have confirmed the decade long process which morphed Correa’s party from one rooted in the highlands (in particular in urban areas) to one much more stronger in the coastal provinces. Compared to 2006, the map of Correa vote has dramatically changed, its worst 2006 province (Manabí) having become its stronghold, El Oro dropping from 2006 best coastal province to 2021 worst coastal province, the strong support in Azuay and the Galápagos having largely vanished, etc. It isn’t without sharing some similarities with the old PRE map.
Among the distinctive patterns of the UNES vote are a very strong support in the export-oriented plantations areas in the coast (for example between 64.4% and 48.4% in the parishes of El Guabo canton, El Oro, a major center of banana production; 42.9% in Los Rios province as a whole) but also along the coastline of Manabí and southwestern Esmeraldas which benefited from strong governmental investments (sometimes lost in corruption) after the 2016 earthquake (65.0% in Pedernales, Manabí; from 60.2% to 55.1% in the urban part of Montecristi, Manabí, a town that was also used as the seat of the 2007-08 Constituent Assembly for being the birthplace of Eloy Alfaro).
The UNES tends also to over-perform among Afro-Ecuadorians as demonstrated by its score in Esmeraldas province (40.9%), in the Chota Valley constituting the boundary between Carchi and Imbabura provinces and in Comité del Pueblo (31.0%), its best urban parish in Quito and the Pichincha parish with the higher rate of Afro-Ecuadorian self-identification (10.5%).
In majors cities it receives its best results low-income parishes and its worst in the most affluent ones, hardly a surprise (28.2% in Calderón, a popular suburb of Quito where overcrowded housing is a major problem against 13.3% in Rumipamba; in Guayaquil area, it is 48.1% in Pascuales parish and between 44.1% and 51.3% in the three parishes of Durán against 16.7% in La Aurora, a new town with gated communities and 4.9% in La Puntilla).
As a general rule, the UNES didn’t performed well with indigenous voters (10.2% in Saraguro, Loja; 11.4% in Zarayacu, Pastaza; 6.7% in Salasca, Tungurahua; 7.0% in Taisha, Morona Santiago to name a few places with a strong indigenous identity) with two exceptions: evangelicals (34.9% in Santiago de Quito or 33.9% in Flores, both located in Chimborazo; 89.2%, The UNES’s best parish, in Oyacachi, Napo) even if it’s hard to correctly assess the phenomenon in the absence of detailed and reliable data about religious affiliation; the southwest Imbabura-northwest Pichincha area (covering notably the cantons of Otavalo and Cayambe) which is possibly explained by several factors: a historical presence of the FEI (Federation of Ecuadorian Indians, the first ever indigenous organization founded notably by communist, feminist and land reform and kichwa language activists Dolores Cacuango and Tránsito Amaguaña) which, while nationally moribund, appears to have be co-opted by the Correa government; the support of local indigenous leaders, notably Ricardo Ulcuango, a former PK deputy and ambassador to Bolivia under Correa whose name appears on the UNES’s national list; finally, and more importantly, the socio-economic characteristics of the area where the main industries of employment are cut flowers production and textile manufacturing making a large share of the local population salaried employees of private companies and setting it apart from the majority of the indigenous population that is small farmers (the consequence is that they are less receptive to the Pachakutik/CONAIE discourse on land rights and land reform, access to water and environmental protection against extractive industries).
Also noticeable are the especially poor results in the provincial capitals of the Sierra like Ambato, Riobamba, Loja or Latacunga and interesting over-performance in mestizo-populated remote cantons on the eastern slope of the Andes like Baños (Tungurahua), Sevilla del Oro, El Pan and Chordeleg (Azuay) and Espíndola (Loja) I have no explanation for.
Goals in the local elections
While the RC caucus has registered a minimal number of defections, looking like more solid than Pachakutik and the ID, the party is entering the election period with a degraded image, the consequence of its participation into parliamentary machinations and surprise abstention in the vote of the government’s tax law and accusations of ties with drug-trafficking made notably against assemblyman Ronny Aleaga, a (supposedly) reformed member of the Latin Kings street gang, embroiled in a series of scandals over his participation to a party in a Miami villa in the company of a business and justice fugitive investigated in a case of overpricing in the procurement of medical devises to public hospitals and now suspected of having laundering drug money, the subsequent withdrawal of his visa by the US government, his awarding of military decoration to two sailors currently investigating for their ties with a drug cartel local leader and now his participation in the corruption network operating in the public companies.
Furthermore, the selection of candidates in the local elections seems to have frustrated the party’s bases as various candidates with a loyal/activist profile have been passed over in favor of people with no previous political experience, tied to business sector or seen as opportunists because they defected from other parties or because they have previously publicly criticized Correa. Such mistake, that incited disappointed RC candidates to run as dissidents or even non-Correísta candidates to posture as the real Correísta option against the ‘official’ candidate, will be blamed on Aguiñaga (even it is clear she isn’t doing nothing without the approval of the exiled big boss) in case of electoral setback and could led to a deepening of the internal feuds. Because hostilities have started even before the elections took place as the RC candidate for mayor of Guayaquil, Aquiles Álvarez, a businessman without previous political experience, has engaged in a public dispute with Andrés Arauz in late December/early January, firstly describing him as a ‘bad candidate’ and accusing him of having provoked the 2021 defeat by changing his campaign team and wrongly assumed that his first round result was his own political capital and not the one of Correa, then by calling him an ‘idiot’ in a promptly deleted tweet. In his feud, Álvarez received the support of Aguiñaga who stated that it is Arauz that started the dispute by criticizing Álvarez’s campaign and said that Arauz ‘isn’t part of the Citizen Revolution’ in spite of the former presidential candidate participating in several RC election meetings in the following days.
Anyway, the RC can hardly do worse than four years ago even if the reelections of Leonardo Orlando as prefect of Manabí (where he is facing a strong right-wing challenger, the mayor of Portoviejo Agustín Casanova) and Paola Pabón as prefect of Pichincha (embroiled in several scandals and elected in 2019 only thanks to fragmentation of anti-Correísmo into a dozen of candidacies) aren’t ensured. Marcela Aguiñaga has reasonable chances of victory in the race for prefect of Guayas, as the incumbent PSC prefect isn’t particularly popular and see her support undermined by two candidacies of PSC dissidents. If polls are to be believed, this is however game over for Aquiles Álvarez in the race for mayor of Guayaquil as the PSC incumbent mayor has a large lead and as the candidacy of Jimmy Jairala, who terminated the UNES alliance over the RC’s refusal to support his bid for mayor, is disputing Álvarez the lower-income voters and appears to have overtake him.
The surprise could come from Quito where Pabel Muñoz, an economist and former assemblyman, is reporting doing a good campaign and is closing the gap with the favorite, Jorge Yunda (supported by Pachakutik), benefiting from the inability of the right to consolidate behind a single candidacy and a high floor (but also a low ceiling). It seems probable that the less polarizing of the two will became the next mayor of Quito, bar yet another polling fiasco (back in 2019, not a single poll predicted the victory of Yunda while the favorite that year, Paco Moncayo, ultimately placed third). The polls aren’t good for the RC candidates for mayor of Cuenca and prefect of Azuay.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page