Ecuadorian elections (referendum, 21 April 2024)

[Sir John Johns]

https://twitter.com/FerdinanAZ87/status/1716612616838164795

I have presented before the National Electoral Council my formal request for disaffilation from the Citizen Revolution Movement, to which I have been a member since approximately 2020.

In the next hours I will explain the reasons for this decision.

To the militancy, my gratitude and sincere affection, always.

Ferdinan Álvarez has made public his departure from the RC. A new leaked audio have revealed a quite heated discussion between Álvarez and Glas about Padilla while yet another audio, attributed to the former vice president, is suggesting that Glas pressured her former personal assistant to not file her complaint for legal reasons: as Glas has been released on parole, the starting of a new legal proceeding could sent him back in jail, under preventive detention.

More interestingly, the leaked audios are revealing the existence of cliques inside the RC as Glas is describing Alexis Mera (once the almighty juridical secretary of Correa) as an ‘enemy’ while appearing to have also a personal grudge against Vinicio Alvarado, the head of the communication inside the RC and the main sponsor of the candidacy of Luisa González. According to El Universo, in addition to the Glas clique (Paola Cabezas, Sofia Espín) and the Rafael Correa clique (the Alvarado brothers, Alexis Mera and the Paola Pabón-Pabel Muñoz duo in Pichincha) there would be at least two additional groups, one around Pierina Correa (with Roberto Cuero and Alexandra Arce, two legislators from Guayas) and one around Marcela Aguiñaga and Aquiles Álvarez.

[Sir John Johns]

Map of the presidential first round:



Thanks to the division of the right-wing/anti-Correísta vote and the absence of a strong indigenous candidacy like in 2021, the RC candidate is placing ahead in a very large number of parishes across the country.

As expected, González came first in almost all parishes of the Costa region, including the urban parishes of Esmeraldas City (with a result ranging between 30.6% and 36.2%) or Telembí, Esmeraldas (42.7%), the only coastal parish with an indigenous majority (Yaku Pérez placed second there with 32.2%).

The RC candidate received over 50% of the vote in the parishes of Esmeraldas province next to the Colombian border (73.4% in Mataje, a parish particularly affected by violence due to illegal and paramilitary groups) as well as most of the parishes on the shoreline stretching from Muisne (Esmeraldas) to Puerto López (southern Manabí), most of the Guayas River Valley (covering center-east Manabí, northern Guayas and eastern Los Ríos: 55.7% in Canuto, the ‘home parish’ of González in Chone Canton), the island of Puná (59.7%) off Guayaquil and the banana-growing area stretching from Babahoyo Canton in Los Ríos to El Retiro parish in Machala Canton, El Oro (57.4% in Balao, 51.4% in Naranjito, 50.5% in Naranjal, 51.5% in El Guabo).

The RC candidate generally received weaker results in the urban areas compared to the rural hinterland, losing notably the three urban parishes of Jipijapa, Manabí (won by Daniel Noboa with results ranging between 30.7% and 34.8% of the votes), the Camilo Ponce urban parish in Babahoyo (won by Noboa with 29.8%) or several parishes of downtown Guayaquil, notably the part of Tarqui parish included in the Guayas’ third electoral district where Villavicencio/Zurita placed first with 24.7% of the votes, followed by Noboa with 24.2% and González with 22.3%.

Noboa also placed first in the most urbanized part of the Santa Elena peninsula (36.5% in Santa Elena urban parish; 36.7% in La Libertad) as well as in the ‘satellite parish’ of La Aurora (26.0% against 24.4% for Villavicencio/Zurita, 17.2% for Sonnenholzner, 16.1% for González and 15.4% for Topic) mostly constituted by gated communities. Sonnenholzner placed first in La Puntilla, Samborondón (the only parish he won), the ghetto of super-rich, where he received 36.6% of the votes against 29.6% for Villavicencio, 16.7% for Topic, 10.8% for Noboa and only 5.7% for González, contrasting with the canton seat parish where González received 50.9% of the vote against 16.9% for Noboa, 12.3% for Topic, 10.8% for Sonnenholzner and 7.1% for Villavicencio.

Finally, the mining area around Zaruma-Portovelo in the southeastern part of El Oro has been disputed between Noboa and Villavicencio (32.0% for Villavicencio against 25.7% for Noboa in the canton seat parish of Zaruma; 26.7% for Noboa against 26.2% for Villavicencio in the canton seat parish of Portovelo).

A rapid comparison with the 2021 results are indicating that the Correísta candidate has scored massive losses (in percent point but also in raw votes as these are populous areas) in the major urban centers of the Costa – contrasting with how the RC is improving its results absolutely everywhere in the rest of the country, a proof that its candidate has really no personal vote. In spite of having capturing the municipality to the PSC, the RC candidate saw its support decreasing in all urban parishes of Guayaquil (as a whole, the support for Correísmo has collapsed in Guayaquil canton from 38.1% in 2021 to 33.6% in 2023) with the heaviest loses being recorded in the most disadvantaged parishes: -5.8 pp in Ximena and Febres-Cordero, -5.0 pp in Pascuales, -4.5 pp in Letamendi.

Similar massive loses in the impoverished Durán Canton (-7.3 pp in Eloy Alfaro and El Recreo; -5.9 pp in Divino Niño), in Milagro (-5.3 pp in the urban part of the canton), in Manta (-8.4 pp in San Mateo, -8.1 pp in Los Esteros, -7.5 pp in Eloy Alfaro, -6.6 pp in Tarqui), in Portoviejo (-6.3 pp in Picoaza; -5.7 pp in San Pablo, -5.5 pp in Simón Bolívar, -3.8 pp in Andrés de Vera), in Esmeraldas City (-6.4 pp in Luis Tello, -5.7 pp in Bartolomé Ruiz, -3.3 pp in 5 de Agosto, -3.0 pp in Simón Plata Torres, -2.1 in Esmeraldas parish) or in Machala (-4.8 pp in Puerto Bolívar, -4.1 pp in Machala parish, -2.9 pp in 9 de Mayo, -1.9 pp in Jambelí). Correísmo also registered losses in Quevedo, Babahoyo, Montecristi or Santa Elena. I think the main reason is quite clear: insecurity.


In the highlands, the RC is receiving its best results in its traditional strongholds of the Chota Valley (Afro-Ecuadorian-populated area constituting the border between Carchi and Imbabura provinces), in the Awá indigenous-populated northwestern part of Carchi (59.4% in Tobar Donoso, Tulcán), in the El Pan and Sevilla de Oro rural cantons of the northeastern quarter of Azuay province, in the mining canton of Camilo Ponce Enríquez in Azuay Province (52.1% in the seat of the canton) or in the remote rural cantons of Loja province (43.7% in Zapatillo Canton, 46.4% in Puyango Canton, 44.8% in Espíndola Canton).

The RC also over-performed among most of the indigenous-populated areas, greatly improving on the results of Arauz in 2021. It notably did well among the Otavalo and Kayambi communities in Imbabura and northeastern Pichincha (39.5% in Cayambe Canton; 40.4% in Otavalo Canton) and among the evangelical communities in Chimborazo (42.2% in Flores, Riobamba; 46.3% in Santiago de Quito, Colta) while also receiving a result above its national average in central Cotopaxi (48.3% in Chugchilán and 41.5% in Isinliví in Sigchos Canton; 40.9% in Zumbahua and 42.3% in Pilaló in Pujilí Canton), in the overwhelmingly indigenous parishes of Simiátug (Bolívar province) with 36.6% against 19.3% for Pérez or in Ingapirca (Cañar province) with 41.8%.

By contrast, the RC is doing less well in the popular urban neighborhoods of Quito (31.0% in Comité del Pueblo; 30.1% in Calderón; 29.9% in Guamaní) while being demolished in all the provincial capitals: 23.3% in Cuenca Canton; 20.6% in Guaranda Canton; 18.1% in Azogues; 17.7% in Latacunga Canton; 15.8% in Riobamba Canton; 15.4% in Loja Canton or 14.2% in Ambato Canton (and keep in mind these are the results at cantonal level which are including rural parishes where González received slightly better results than in the urban parishes themselves).

The most-voted candidate in the highlands was however Noboa who, quite clearly, captured most of Hervas 2021 voters and part of the Lasso 2021 electorate and Pérez 2021 white/mestizo voters. The ADN candidate placed ahead in the middle-class neighborhoods of Quito (Villavicencio won the wealthiest ones and González the poorest ones), in the vast majority of the provincial capitals (37.3% in Loja Canton; 28.4% in Cuenca Canton; 30.4% in Latacunga Canton; 31.6% in Riobamba Canton; 35.5% in Tulcán Canton; 36.1% in Ambato Canton) and in the white/mestizo rural/suburban communities located in the central Andean valley stretching from the south of Quito to Riobamba. The strongest result for the ADN candidate are to be found in Tungurahua Province (Noboa’s best province), the birthplace of Luis Noboa Naranjo, the grandfather of Daniel and the founder of the Noboa Group, but also a province where commerce is playing an important economic role and where agriculture is controlled by small and medium sized mestizo farmers (same case for Carchi, the fourth best province for Noboa).

Meanwhile, Villavicencio placed ahead in the wealthiest parts of Quito (40.0% in Rumipamba against 20.6% for Sonnenholzner, 15.4% for González and 12.4% for Noboa; 33.8% in Iñaquito) and its posh suburban parishes (28.5% in Cumbayá; 24.7% in Conocoto), of Cuenca (31.6% in San Blas, covering the colonial center of the city; 28.1% in Huaynacápac; but only 13.5% in the poor neighborhood of Hermano Miguel won by Noboa with 31.5%) and of Loja (36.2% in El Sagrario) as well as rural parts of the central Sierra, benefiting seemingly from a ‘favorite son’ effect as Villavicencio was a native from Alausí, Chimborazo (the Construye ticket placed second in the canton with 25.7% against 31.5% for González and came first in the cantonal seat with 32.5% of the votes). Villavicencio/Zurita also came first in the provincial capitals of Azogues (25.5%) and Guaranda (25.6%) as well as in Cochapamba (Cotopaxi), one of the poorest and most indigenous parish of the country, where the Construye candidate(s) received 24.4% of the votes against 20.9% for Pérez, 20.7% for Noboa and 14.1% for González. Generally speaking, however, neither Noboa nor Villavicencio did that well with indigenous.

Not a surprise but Pérez placed first in parishes which are either overwhelmingly indigenous (26.8% in Pilahuín, Tungurahua; also the Saraguro-populated areas in northern Loja – with 44.9% in San Lucas, 43.2% in San Pablo de Tenta or 29.9% in Saraguro parish – and in the northernwestern corner of the Amazon province of Zamora Chinchipe) or are experiencing conflicts over mining projects (29.3% in San Salvador de Cañaribamba, Azuay; the area around Girón, also in Azuay). Pérez placed also second in Las Naves Canton with 19.6% (against 29.4% for González), a place in Bolívar province where clashes happened between the police and anti-mining local activists few weeks before the first round.



In the Amazon, González came ahead in the majority of the parishes located in the northeastern part of the region (Sucumbíos and Orellana provinces, northern Napo). This is the part of the Amazon which has experienced an important colonization in the 1970s (with many mestizo settlers coming from Loja and Manabí provinces) and where the local indigenous identities have been weakened by said colonization as well as by a long history of human rights abuses, epidemics, economic exploitation and forced acculturation (notably through the Spanish Jesuit missions at the time of the colonization or the US evangelical missions in the second half of the twentieth century) not helped by some local factors like the practice of exogamy by Siona and Secoya indigenous groups or the very late contact (1960s) with the Waorani communities. Clearly the RC benefited there to the local opposition to the referendum on Yasuní as oil industry is one of the main employers of the area. Like in the rest of the country, González tended to comparatively underperforming in the urban centers with for example 41.4% in Nueva Loja, which is under her provincial result (45.8%) in Sucumbíos), 33.1% in El Coca (under her provincial result – 36.3% - in Orellana), 24.3% in Macas and abysmal results in Puyo (14.0%), Tena (14.7%) and Zamora (13.8%). Like in 2021, the best parish nationwide for the Correísta candidate is Oyacachi, in northern Napo, a partly evangelical indigenous community where González received an extraordinary 84.0% of the vote.

Villavicencio placed ahead among the Kichwa-populated areas in western Pastaza and southern Napo; in that latter province, Topic, in spite of the support of Lucio Gutiérrez, could only placed fourth with 19.3% (still his best province) and won a single parish. Villavicencio received notably 29.7% (against 28.8% for González and 25.5% for Pérez) in Sarayacu, the indigenous community that sheltered him when he was persecuted by the Correa government.

Pérez came first in the areas corresponding to the Shuar-populated communities in eastern Morona Santiago (with a strong 44.5% in Taisha Canton) and in Nuevo Paraíso (Zamora Chinchipe) as well as to the aforementioned Saraguro communities in northwestern Zamora Chinchipe.

For his part, Noboa won the whole area around Zamora (where Hervas already overperformed in 2021) as well as the capital provinces of Morona Santiago (25.8% in Macas) and Pastaza (33.1% in Puyo).



Finally, unlike in 2021, the Correísta candidate managed to come first in the majority of the parishes in the Galápagos even if she barely improved her result compared to Arauz (24.4% against 24.1%), benefiting from the splitting of the right-wing vote. A decade ago, Correa received 62.2% of the vote in the archipelago but it seems Correísmo has durably alienated the voters there with its 2015 attempt to curb the autonomy and slash the economic advantages enjoyed by the inhabitants.

[Sir John Johns]

Map of the runoff:



A comparison with the 2021 runoff map when the CONAIE, Pachakutik and the main unions were campaigning for the ‘ideological null vote’ is showing that there has been actually not that much parishes which were ‘flipped’ by the Correísta candidate outside of the rural periphery of Quito and the northern part of Amazon.



The general pattern is that González performed better in rural areas while Noboa prevailed in the urban ones.



This is quite noticeable in Pichincha, where the RC candidate failed to place ahead in any single urban parish in Quito, including the low-income ones like Comité del Pueblo (45.7%), Guamaní (47.2%) or Calderón (45.0%; technically a ‘rural’ parish but now a largely urbanized suburb of Quito). By contrast, she placed ahead in the rural periphery of the capital.

Similar situation in Azuay province where González was defeated in all urban parishes of Cuenca (its best parish being Hermano Miguel with 44.0%) as well as in the cantons home to a strong anti-mining movement (39.1% in Santa Isabel; 30.7% in Girón) while prevailing in the margins of the province like the mining sector of Camilo Ponce Enríquez (67.1% in this canton), the indigenous-populated area of Nabón (55.8% in the canton’s seat) or Sevilla de Oro, a traditional stronghold of Correísmo (70.9% in the whole canton).

Noboa placed ahead in all provincial capitals of the Sierra with 60.7% in Guaranda Canton, 71.3% in Azogues Canton, 67.9% in Tulcán Canton, 67.4% in Latacunga Canton, 74.4% in Riobamba, 59.1% in Ibarra Canton (one of the two cantons he won in Imbabura against four for González), 76.7% in Loja Canton and 75.0% in Ambato Canton. Meanwhile, González, as a general rule, prevailed in the indigenous-populated areas like Otavalo Canton (58.6%), Cayambe Canton (62.1%), central Cotopaxi (77.8% in Chugchilán or 69.2% in Zumbahua; being otherwise defeated by Noboa in Cochapamba with 27.9%), the most indigenous parts of Bolívar province (65.6% in Simiátug, a poor and remote indigenous parish in Guaranda Canton), most of Chimborazo bar Riobamba and the white/mestizo northern part of the province (66.1% in Santiago de Quito, 55.0% in Guamote’s canton seat), parts of Cañar province (60.9% in Ingapirca). The major exceptions are the indigenous communities in Tungurahua (27.7% in Salasaca, 43.2% in Pilahüín) and the Saraguro-populated areas in Loja province (36.4% in Saraguro Canton; 20.5% in San Lucas, Loja Canton).



Same pattern is observable in the coastal provinces. In Guayas, Noboa unsurprisingly prevailed in La Puntilla (91.8%) and La Aurora (77.6%) wealthy satellite parishes while also sweeping all urban parishes of Guayaquil bar Pascuales (won by González with 60.3%). This includes Ximena (51.1% for Noboa) which had been won by Arauz in 2021 with 50.8% of the vote. Conversely, the ADN candidate is defeated in all other parishes of the province, still scoring a respectable 44.5% in Durán Canton and 42.9% in Milagro Canton, respectively the second and third-most populated cantons of the province.

Noboa prevailed by a very small margin in the cantons of Santo Domingo (50.8%) and Esmeraldas (50.6%, contrasting with his results in the rest of Esmeraldas province with impressive victories of González in Muisne and Eloy Alfaro Cantons with 77.7%) while almost placing ahead in Machala (won by González with 50.6%). Such results are indicative of some problems with urban voters of the RC which still placed ahead in Manta (66.4%), Portoviejo (61.2%), Babahoyo (53.3%), Quevedo (61.5%) and Santa Elena (59.8%).

Noboa otherwise placed ahead in the urban part of Jipijapa canton in southern Manabí, in some of the most touristic parts of Santa Elena province where lies his political basis (winning Salinas Canton with 52.0%) and in the mining area around Zaruma (77.0% in the canton seat) and Portovelo (67.2%).



In the Amazon, González placed ahead in every canton of the provinces of Orellana and Sucumbíos, doing however comparatively worse in the urban provincial seats (54.4% in Nueva Loja, 48.4% in Puerto Francisco de Orellana/El Coca). In the rest of the Amazon, the RC candidate was heavily defeated by Noboa, winning only the two Achuar-populated parishes of Río Corrientes (53.1%) and Huasaga (51.0%) while placing far behind Noboa in the Shuar-populated areas (18.4% in the Taisha Canton seat), in Zarayacu (41.2% of the valid votes, but with 34.5% of null ballots cast, the parish with the highest share in the whole country), in the indigenous southern part of Napo province as well as in the provincial capitals: 34.7% in Macas, 22.7% in Tena, 22.5% in Puyo and 19.6% in Zamora.



In the Galápagos, Noboa received a comfortable 66.1% of the votes, winning all parishes but Isla Santa María, a 125-registered-voters-parish won by González with 65.6% of the votes.



Map of the change in support for the Correísta candidate between 2021 and 2023 runoffs (percent point):



Support for the RC increased in every parishes of Pichincha province as well as in most of the northern and northern-central highlands with sharp increase in the indigenous, rural, area covering southern-central Cotopaxi, western Tungurahua and northeastern Bolívar (which had largely cast null votes in the 2021 runoff) as well as the westernmost part of Loja province. Strong increase also in most of Esmeraldas province, the whole northern Amazon (probably for some part boosted by the support for the ‘no’ in the Yasuní referendum) and northern Manabí (Luisa González effect?).

The zones where the support for the RC are including most of the urban parishes of Guayaquil, especially in the popular ones (Pascuales, Ximena, Letamendi, Febres-Cordero – minus 3.3 percent point in the latter one), the cities of southern Manabí (Manta, Portoviejo, Montecristi) and Machala as well as the zone bordering Colombia in Esmeraldas, and the main factor for such decline must certainly be attributed to rising criminality, a topic voters may not trust the RC to solve. The RC also declined in the Santa Elena peninsula thanks to Daniel Noboa’s local implantation. Similarly it lost ground in Cuenca and the south central highlands, indigenous parts of Chimborazo and in the Jivaroan (Shuar and Achuar alike) populated areas in Zamora Chinchipe, Morona Santiago and Pastaza, all places which massively cast null ballots back in 2021 rising the question about whether the campaign for the ‘ideological null vote’ actually changed the outcome of the 2021 election.

[Sir John Johns]

* The election of Daniel Noboa has been officially confirmed by the CNE after the rejection of a challenge filed by a Construye candidate for alternate assemblyman for Europe, Asia and Oceania who seek to get the whole presidential and legislative elections declared void on a very weak basis. The challenge has been publicly disavowed by the Construye movement which denounced a personal decision. The election of the national assemblymen as well as the one of assemblymen for Ecuadorian abroad are also validated (the election of provincial assemblymen having been confirmed weeks ago).

Meaning that the new National Assembly will be sworn in on 20 November and Noboa inaugurated on 1 December.



* There have been rumors about the new legislature possibly attempting to use the delay between its own swearing into office and the inauguration of Noboa to relaunch the impeachment proceedings against the outgoing president, because why not. Lasso would be removed and the vice-president, the incredibly transparent and insignificant Alfredo Borrero, would ascend to the presidency for a few days or hours, only for presenting the presidential sash to Noboa.

The motives of the impeachment would be the economic and fiscal mismanagement of the country, the budget cuts which, according to the elected parliamentarians, are preventing the new legislature to function properly, the ongoing electricity blackouts, the probable imminent indictment of Danilo Carrera in the Encuentro case (which has been merged by the Attorney-General’s Office with the León de Troya case comprising the presumed ties of Carrera with shady businessman Rubén Cherres and the Albanian mafia) and the security situation (‘Satanás’, one of the most dangerous leaders of the Tren de Aragua, has been arrested on 2 November in Ecuador, where he was living since about two months, hence contradicting previous statements made by the Interior Minister about the absence of the Venezuelan gang in the country).

Lasso is so much discredited that he has been rebuked in a Twitter message by Tiko Tiko, a famous clown who notably host educational television shows, after the president had stated that members of the previous legislature were ‘looking more like Tiko Tiko or a circus clown than Ecuadorians concerned about their country’.



* Negotiations for the constitution of a parliamentary majority and the election of the leadership of the next National Assembly and the distribution of the commissions is underway but it is an uneasy process with its lot of twists.

Henry Kronfle (PSC) has previously denied the existence of a ‘political pact’ between the RC, the PSC and the ADN to share the leadership positions in the legislature and give the presidency of the house to him. But this denial has been denied after Kronfle had engaged into a Twitter feud with Rafael Correa which crudly exposed a key part of the 'political pact': the removal of the attorney-general (fiscal general) Diana Salazar, responsible for the indicment and sentencing in absentia of Correa (for the details about concrete policies and legislation to get passed, it is simple, none has been revealed, providing there are ones).

https://twitter.com/fabriciovelav/status/1720521696266932264

How to blast a political agreement in four acts.

As rumors about the ‘political pact’ including the impeachment of Salazar had became more and more insistent, Kronfle posted a statement on Twitter dismissing them as a ‘deceptive refrain’ and pretending that the issue had never been raised during the negotiations, adding that the PSC would never agreed to impeach Salazar nor to interfere with the justice. Correa responded, also on Twitter, by calling Kronfle a liar and by insisting about the removal of Salazar being indeed an integral part of the agreement.

An allegation dismissed a second time by Kronfle who reiterated the PSC position adopted since 2021 about not removing the attorney-general. Kronfle also emphasized the ‘fundamentally positive’ agenda of his party and it goal of ‘resolving the very severe problems that all Ecuadorians have’ (blatant lies, of course). Correa again dismissed the statement of Kronfle (‘that’s not what you said in your first trill’).



* The feud between Kronfle and Correa took place just after the attorney-general’s office had raided the prefecture of Pichincha to seek evidences about a potential fictitious job and embezzlement in favor of Jorge Glas’ ex-assistant and (rumored) ex-girlfriend.

Glas who had claimed that said ex-assistant and her new boyfriend, Assemblyman Ferdinan Álvarez (ex-RC), had tried to extort him $350,000 in exchange of the secretly recorded audios involving Correa, Alexis Mera and the Alvarado brothers.

For his part, Ferdinan Álvarez has denounced in a TV interview the supposed existence of a plot to attack him, a plot allegedly engineered since Colombia where Álvarez would have a price on his head. This came few days after Álvarez had declared that, if something happen to him, Glas should be held responsible. Álvarez is now reported to have joined a witness protection program. As summed up by a guy on Twitter, the whole Glas-Álvarez story has morphed from a Melrose Place episode into an episode of The Sopranos.

The RC has expressed its full support to Glas through a statement which also paradoxically claims the movement is constituted by ‘unconditional defenders of women’s rights’. The RC members have labeled Álvarez as a ‘traitor’ and called him to resign his seat, being no longer a member of the political movement he has been a elected for.


* Latest twist, this night, when Daniel Noboa, who is currently in the United States to meet with investors and representatives of international organizations after a first trip in Spain during which he had met King Felipe VI, has made clear the ADN bench will not support an impeachment of Salazar while also insisting on the necessity to ‘protect individuals like [Salazar] who are working hard against the criminal organizations operating in [Ecuador]’. Noboa also appeared confident about having a majority (between 80 and 90 votes) to get his economic laws being approved (mentions have been made about a fiscal reform to increase the state’s revenues).

Finally, it has been revealed that Noboa is contemplating filing a lawsuit for libel against Luisa González over allegations made by the latter during an interview about Noboa having approached the RC to obtain its support in his presidential bid and having seen the proposal declined by the RC over Noboa’s alleged tax evasion and problems of the familial Exportadora Noboa company with Ecuador’s tax administration.

Such developments, combined to the Twitter feud of Correa with Kronfle but also Jan Topic (there are people in the RC asking for Correa having his phone confiscated), seems to point towards a collapse of the RC-PSC-ADN political agreement.

[Sadader]

Noboa also appeared confident about having a majority (between 80 and 90 votes) to get his economic laws being approved (mentions have been made about a fiscal reform to increase the state’s revenues).

This alliance seems about as doomed as Lasso's attempt lol. And how can they possible raise taxes or cut spending? I feel like his agenda will be dead on day one. Are there any details on this fiscal reform?

[Sir John Johns]

The only details of the planned fiscal reform made public by Noboa during a meeting with officials of the Barclays Bank were a promise to not increase taxes (actually he stated he will fulfill his promise to lower taxes) as well as a reduction in the VAT rate in construction materials (from 12% to 5%) to relaunch the building sector. Incentives for hiring young workers will also be probably include.

None of this are increasing the revenues of the state, unless you are very optimistic and are betting on the tax incentives being sufficient to relaunch the economy, attract foreign investors and reduce unemployment.

On the other hand, when meeting this time with officials of the IMF and the World Bank, Noboa warned about a real risk of default on the public debt in 2026 or 2027 in case he doesn’t get financing for his economic plan and for badly needed public investments.

A nine-month bridge loan as requested by Noboa will be certainly not enough however to solve the really bad fiscal deficit of the country which is made worse by the recent decline in oil prices and the necessities to comply with the results of the Yasuní referendum and the irresponsible decisions of the Lasso administration on last January to decrease the tax for the exit of currencies, income tax for selected households or the VAT rate on tourist activities (depriving the state of further financial resources for insignificant economic results).

So contradictory signals gave by Noboa (who has remained largely silent about his future actions as a president, including on urgent issues like the electricity shortages or insecurity) who anyway will not produce miracles as the economic problems of Ecuador are deep-rooted and insoluble in just eighteen months.


* The date of the convening of the inaugural session of the new National Assembly has been moved forward to 17 November with the inauguration of Noboa being tentatively rescheduled for 23 November (instead of 1 December).


* There was a repeat of the election of the new national coordinator of Pachakutik (the first election having been nullified by the CNE due to irregularities) and the candidate sponsored by Iza, Guillermo Churuchumbi, has again win the contest, receiving 451 votes against 416 for his right-leaning rival and incumbent sub-coordinator Cecilia Velasque and 14 votes for a third candidate, Jorge Herrera, who had withdrew to endorse Velasque while 7 blank or null votes were cast. Back in April, during the nullified election, Churuchumbi received 355 votes, Velasque 289, Herrera 178, blanks and nulls 133.

So a victory for Iza, but not a resounding one (Churuchumbi received barely an absolute majority) in spite of the political strategy of the previous coordination having been fairly disastrous.


* Construye caucus down to 26 legislators:

https://twitter.com/Construye_Ecu/status/1723037746061627542

The Construye 25 bench will be composed of 26 legislators.

We are announcing the country the expulsion of assemblyman-elect for Chimborazo, Paúl Aulla, after his meeting with Wilman Terán, the president of the Judicature Council, against whom the bench has already decided to present an impeachment motion.

We aren’t hesitating at the moment of taking a position about what we have proposed to the country together with Fernando Villavicencio:

#the country or the mafia

Construye had already two or three other legislators (members of the Villavicencio's unregistered Gente Buena) who will not seat in its caucus but instead inside the pro-Noboa 'Political Ethics Bench' currently organized by Lucio Gutiérrez with assemblymen elected for the PSP and the Avanza-SUMA alliance.

[Sir John Johns]

The first session of the new National Assembly took place yesterday with the constitution of the parliamentary benches and the election of the Council of Legislative Administration (CAL), the governing body of the house.

There are only four parliamentary caucuses:

Citizen Revolution: 51 seats
National Democratic Alliance: 25 seats
PSC and allies: 18 seats
Construye: 18 seats

The RC lost a legislator (Ferdinan Álvarez now seating as an independent) compared to the results of the legislative election, the ADN bench has been enlarged to include legislators of SUMA, RETO, AMIGO and CD (provoking the collapse of the SUMA-Avanza alliance in the process) while Construye lost eleven legislators, the ones close to Gente Buena, the unregistered party founded by the late Villavicencio.

As predicted by many jurists, Patricio Carrillo (Construye) was also unable to take his seat due to his impeachment in February 2023 for his controversial tenure as interior minister; it was his substitute who has instead sworn in office.

Construye and the most anti-Correísta legislators came out as the biggest losers of the election of the CAL as, defying predictions, the alliance between the ADN, the RC and the PSC successfully materialized, enabling the smoothly and quick election of the new CAL by an overwhelming majority (bar the election of the representatives of the RC as well as the third member of the CAL supposed to be allocated to Construye; see below).

https://twitter.com/AsambleaEcuador/status/1725613985066521001


* Henry Kronfle, a PSC assemblyman since 2017 and a former president of the Chamber of Industries of Guayaquil and of the Ecuadorian Employers’ Committee, has been elected president of the National Assembly with 128 votes out of 137. Were abstaining two legislators for Gente Buena, one for Avanza and Claro que se puede each as well as the Pachakutik five-member all-female group.

* Viviana Veloz, a RC assemblywoman for Santo Domingo since 2021, has been elected the first vice-president of the National Assembly, but with a reduced majority compared to Kronfle, receiving 99 votes in favor. 24 legislators (Construye and Gente Buena) voted against and 14 abstained. Veloz was one of the main sponsors of the motion to impeach Guillermo Lasso early this year, a motion that contained many mistakes including a misspelled version of the name of the president of Ecuador.

* Eckenner Recalde, a MOVER assemblyman representing southern Quito since 2021 and currently seating in the ADN caucus, has been elected the second vice-president of the National Assembly, receiving 130 votes in his favor, the remaining seven legislators abstaining. Recalde is a controversial pick as, when then representing the ID, he faced in 2021 a removal process from the house over allegations of corruption (backed by audios Recalde claims were edited). The removal of Recalde failed thanks to the abstention of the RC and Pachakutik and he subsequently left the ID.

* Esther Cuesta, a RC assemblywoman representing Ecuadorians living in Europe, Asia and Oceania, has been elected the first vocal (member) of the CAL, receiving 101 votes in her favor. 22 legislators voted against her designation and 14 abstained. Before her election in 2017, Cuesta served under Correa as a consul general to Genoa and a vice-minister for Human Mobility.

* Diego Matovelle, elected an ADN assemblyman for Azuay on last August, has been elected the second vocal, receiving 131 votes in his favor (the remaining legislators abstaining). A lawyer and businessman from Cuenca, Matovelle was the ID candidate for prefect of Azuay in last February but has since joined MOVER.

* Construye motioned on its quota Amy Gende, a 24-year-old assemblywoman from Santo Domingo, to become the third vocal of the CAL. A member of the Tsáchila indigenous community, Gende is also the daughter of a former CREO-SUMA assemblyman. However, Gende failed to get elected, having received only 68 votes in her favor, two less than the 70 required votes. The RC voted en bloc against Gende while Gente Buena, once the ally of Construye, abstained.

Due to lack of consensus over a new candidate, the election of the third vocal has been postponed to the next day.

* Finally, Jorge Acaiturri-Villa (PSC), was elected the fourth vocal of the CAL with 130 votes in his favor and 7 abstentions. A businessman who owned shares in companies in water management, construction and shrimp farming sectors, Acaiturri-Villa is also a former administrator of the Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security (IESS) and provincial director for Avanza (a party precisely built with the human and material resources of the IESS), Acaiturri-Villa left Avanza at the time of the indictment of its leader and founder for corruption and money laundering. He reemerged in 2019 as the director for social action in the PSC Guayaquil municipality and was elected a PSC municipal councilor in Guayaquil on last February, a seat he quickly abandoned to successfully run for a seat in the National Assembly.

The election to complete the CAL (third vocal seat) and to designate the members and chairs of the parliamentary commissions is set to happen today.


The remaining questions are how much long such frail alliance (constituted to distribute leadership positions inside the house and not to implement well-defined policies) will subsist and will Noboa be able to pass his political agenda, about which he has so far disclosed little information. The RC has already expressed its intention to seek the chairmanship of the audit commission in order to impeach the attorney-general Diana Salazar (currently on a trip in the United States where she had met with Merrick Garland and the director of the FBI), supposedly a ‘red line’ in the PSC-ADN-RC agreement while many observers are considering that Noboa will have to rely on ad hoc majorities (mayorías móviles) in the house to get each of his pieces of legislation approved.

The Pachakutik legislators have abstained during each election to the CAL, an indication the indigenous movement will probably seat in the opposition, trying to exploit the goodwill displayed so far by the RC towards the Noboa administration. Meanwhile the choice of Recalde and the alliance with the RC has made anti-Correa sectors uncomfortable and could positioned Gente Buena (and maybe Construye) as a right-wing opposition to Noboa, trying to capitalize on the legacy of Villavicencio.

[Sir John Johns]

There is still a seat of vocal remaining vacant in the CAL but the permanent parliamentary commissions have been constituted following the lines of the ADN-RC-PSC agreement.

Out of 16 permanent commissions, the ADN has obtained the chairmanship of five:

* economic and tax regime and its regulation and control
* economic and productive development and micro-businesses
* sovereignty, integration and integral security
* international relations and human mobility
* right to health and sport

The first three commissions will be chaired by newly elected, rather inexperienced, young women: Nathaly Farinango, the ‘baby of the house’ (23) for the economic and tax regime commission, Valentina Centeno for the economic development commission and Inés Alarcón, a fashion designer, for the commission in charge of military and security matters.


The RC got the chairmanship of six commissions:

* justice and structure of the state
* autonomous governments, decentralization, territorial competences and organization
* transparency, citizen participation and social control
* constitutional guarantees, human rights, collective rights and interculturality
* integral protection of children and teenagers
* oversight and political control

Contrasting with the ADN chairs, here it is experienced and Correa loyalist politicians which have obtained some of the most important commissions.

Pamela Aguirre, the new chairwoman of the oversight commission, has made no mystery of her willingness to use the position to restart the impeachment process against Lasso (which could conclude after Lasso’s departure from Carondelet Palace and would bar him from running in 2025, notwithstanding his rather very unlikely chances of victory in case he makes a try) and to remove Diana Salazar from office, a demand which could cause problems with the right-wing parties.

Justice and autonomous government commissions are going to two CPCCS counselors-turn-legislators, respectively Fernando Cedeño and Victoria Desintonio.

The constitutional guarantees commission will be headed by Paola Cabezas, the leader of the RC caucus in the previous legislature, who is intending to get a pardon passed for Ricardo Patiño (a former bigwig of the Correa administration sentenced in abstentia for ‘incitement’ to demonstrations during the 2019 protests) and possibly for Leonidas Iza (related to his judicial problems connected to the 2022 protests), a proposal which is already vetoed by the PSC.

Pierina Correa is returning as head of the child protection commission, definitely the less important commission, in spite of criticisms from feminist groups over her anti-abortion stances.


The PSC has obtained the chairmanship of four commissions:

* right to work and social safety
* biodiversity and natural resources
* food sovereignty and development of the farming and fishing sector
* education, culture, science, technology, innovation and ancestral knowledge

Johnny Terán, heir of a political dynasty of Los Ríos, is heading the labor commission while the biodiversity commission is going to be chaired by Guido Vargas, a former prefect of Sucumbíos province removed from office in 2019 for having illegally used public assets during his reelection campaign who got elected this year for the National Assembly for the PSP but has hence already switched to the PSC.

The constitution of the ethics committee is still pending.



The main losers during the distribution of the commission seats are again Construye (one of its most visible faces, Ana Galarza, who a week ago was aiming for a seat in the CAL is now finding herself as the member of the child protection commission) as well as Lucio Gutiérrez who has failed to constitute his pseudo-ethical parliamentary bench and is ending, like Galarza, in the child protection commission, kind of humiliating for a former head of state.


* Luisa González has been elected the new president of the RC movement, replacing Marcela Aguiñaga who didn’t even attended the movement’s convention and has made public in the latest weeks her willingness to work with Noboa (criticizing on Twitter the demands presented by the CONAIE and posting a video of her work in education sector next to Isabel Noboa). Aguiñaga also shown with a tweet her unhappiness with the public statement issued by the RC to unconditionally support Jorge Glas in his legal battle with the former assistant and Ferdinan Álvarez.

[Sadader]

Sariha Moya's nomination as Finance minister apparently garnered some quite bad reactions from the international Banks; the external public debt is pricing in a near-certainty of yet another default; for instance this 2040 bond is 30c on the dollar. Noboa is moving Moya to the planning ministry instead and will announce a new finance minister today

He'll also declare a state of emergency so he can simultaneously present a tax reform bill and an energy reform bill, after which he will submit bills on tourism and development zones.

https://www.primicias.ec/noticias/politica/adn-leyes-economicas-urgentes-acuerdo-rc-psc/

https://www.primicias.ec/noticias/politica/daniel-noboa-posesion-gobierno-ecuador/

[Sadader]

So remembering back to Macroeconomics 101, it looks like Noboa is doomed...

We can estimate what will happen over the next few years using the fundamental Balance of Payments identity: Change in FX reserves = Current Account Surplus (net trade + foreign income) + Capital Account + Financial Account (e.g. foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, new loans)

Let’s look at 2024-2027, and say we have a GDP of $110bn and real growth of 2%

Debt: $11,353 million is maturing 2024-2027 from official multilateral bilateral sources (IMF, World Bank China) – we can make the very positive assumption that all of that will be replaced by new loans, so call it 0 net. Then we have $2144mn of private external debt, e.g. bank loans and Eurobonds; Ecuador is too risky to issue new debt so these will have to be paid from reserves. There's also $ 9,383mn of domestic debt maturing which I will assume will just be replaced with new domestic debt, so net zero.

Interest: External+Internal government debt interest on everything through 2024 to 2027 = $10.765bn ($2.8bn domestic debt interest + $7.9bn external debt interest)

Trade: We can say Ecuador will probably run a surplus of +$1.5bn per year, down from 2-3bn before, given the closure of Block 43 and lower oil prices. Worth remembering that the current account = savings investment balance, most of which is driven by spending; reducing the fiscal deficit would make the public savings and investment balance more positive which would make current account more positive. If you're only worried about debt sustainability, Noboa's policy of cutting taxes (and hence increasing imports) is insane. Ecuador is a relatively open economy (~27% exports to GDP) so debt is fundamentally quite sustainable despite solvency issues; external debt is fundamentally a claim on reserves and export proceeds; thus fundamentally different from domestic debt so in worst case Ecuador could generate necessary dollars by shrinking domestic demand to compress imports while keeping exports high.

Foreign Invesment: assume $800mn yearly foreign direct investment if Noboa’s reforms succeed.

So we get, for 2024-2027

Change in reserves = Current Account + Capital Account + Financial Account
= (Trade Surplus + Other foreign income such as remittances + FX debt interest) + (Capital Account) + (Net foreign loans + foreign direct investment + portfolio investment)
= ($1500mn*4 + -10765) + (0) + (-2144 + 800*4 + 0)
= (-4765) + (0) + (1056)
= -$3709mn

Ecuador has $6bn of reserves now, so 6-3.709 = $2.3bn reserves end-2027. Because of dollarisation the central bank needs 2,910 million in reserves (total deposits from public/private financial entities) to keep the banking system running. Hence Ecuador will default in 2026-2027.

And it gets worse… I haven’t accounted for the non-interest part of the fiscal deficit; this year’s fiscal deficit will be ~4.2%, and if Noboa cuts taxes this will get higher. Using the equation total deficit = primary deficit + debt interest, we get primary deficits (fiscal deficit excluding debt interest) of ~$2bn a year. So there’s an extra $2bn*4 = $8bn that need to be funded somewhere, either from reserves (no reserves) or debt (no-one wants to lend to Ecuador, especially that much). I don't know if Ecuador can add this much ($8bn primary deficit + $2.8bn domestic debt interest +  7.9bn external debt interest) to domestic debt. If we assume that all drains reserves, we get 6-3.709-8 = -$5.709bn in reserves in 2027…  If Ecuador wants to avoid default, it needs to generate primary surpluses; the IMF program envisaged primary surpluses of 2-3% - see p28 table 2a. This would bring Debt / GDP to ~42.0% in 2027 from 60% today

I feel terrible for Noboa. He either needs to
1. Default now before Ecuador inevitably drains all of its resources
2. Reverse the block 43 closure (is going to reduce tax revenue by $1.2bn a year) or start extracting way more oil.
3. Raise taxes/cut spending (politically impossible and would probably make things worse) and hope for a growth and export miracle. I would never want to excuse Lasso, but his tax/spending actions seem more justifiable in context.

[Sir John Johns]

Daniel Noboa has been sworn in office during an inauguration ceremony whose only attending foreign head of state was Gustavo Petro. The vice-presidents of Brazil and Honduras were also present. Noboa is becoming at 35 the second youngest president of Ecuador.


Noboa is still struggling to constitute his government, clearly not a good sign for his administration.

As mentioned by Sadader, Noboa’s first pick for the ministry of finance and economy was negatively received by foreign lenders forcing her removal to the national secretariat for planning (Senplades). But her replacement hasn’t yet been confirmed. The name of Juan Carlos Vega Malo, a 51-year-old economic and businessman, has been widely mentioned but, against all expectations, he hasn’t been officially appointed and sworn in just after the inauguration ceremony. Meaning that crucial portfolio is still vacant at a time when Noboa’s intentions in economic area remain unclear: a state of exception will be proclaimed to ease the passage of a bill whose precise content hasn’t disclosed. The only indication seems to be that there will be no tax increase as it is opposed by both the PSC and the RC.

Two other ministries are remaining vacant (telecommunications and society of information; woman and human rights) while Noboa’s initial pick for the secretariat of communication (spokesman of the presidency), Iván Carmigniani, had declined the post ten days before Noboa’s inauguration without providing any explanation, being instead replaced by Roberto Izurieta, the current ambassador to Chile.

Similarly unclear are the plans of Noboa concerning the fight against criminality. The choice of Giancarlo Loffredo Rendón, an expert in private security and a martial arts teacher, for the job of defense minister (generally devolved to a military) has been criticized and so has been the apparent decision to merge back the interior ministry with the ministry for government (ministerio de gobierno), eighteen months after the decision of Lasso to recreate the interior ministry. The possible abolition of the interior ministry has been harshly criticized by Rafael Correa who is attributing the rise in criminality to the decision of Lenín Moreno to amalgamate in 2019 the interior ministry with the national secretariat for policy management to create the ministry for government, a decision which disorganized the administration and created an unmanageable ‘super-ministry’ with a bit too much duties to fulfill entirely its role. An aggravating factor may be the name of the new minister of government (also acting as a temporary interior minister), Mónica Palencia, a jurist without political experience (bar the fact she is the widow of the late Francisco ‘Pancho’ Huerta, an influential politician who notably ran for president in 1984) which is a minus when the job is requiring to act as the president’s main political operative.

As for the economic area, not much details have been disclosed about Noboa’s planned policies and what he will include into the proposals he wants to put to referendum in the upcoming months.


The rest of the cabinet of Noboa is, broadly speaking, young, very educated, with experience in business sector and noticeably feminized (11 women against 10 men so far) but not much representative of the Ecuadorian population (no indigenous, no Afro) and few if any political experience, the two exceptions to the latter being Andrés Guschmer (a former PSC municipal councilor in Guayaquil and the RETO candidate for prefect of Guayas in February) as minister for sport and Niels Olsen, the tourism minister under Lasso, who has been confirmed in his portfolio.

[Sir John Johns]

The Noboa administration is starting well:

https://twitter.com/FerminVaca/status/1728158207598596214

The president Noboa has decreed that Vice President Verónica Abad will be ‘a collaborator for peace in Israel’ with an office in the Ecuadorian embassy in Tel Aviv. Since it will be her only duty, the uncommon decision could aim at the exit of Abad.

Noboa is apparently trying to get rid of his estranged vice-president by sending her out of the country. In case Abad not taking her assignment in Israel, this could possibly motivate an impeachment by the National Assembly for failure to comply (some jurists are however disagreeing over the legality of the thing).


Another proof of Noboa’s amateurism:

https://twitter.com/fabriciovelav/status/1728166683506856255

Not a minor fact.

In executive decree 3, President Daniel Noboa granted the Ecuadorian nationality to Mónica Palencia… and in decree 5 he appointed her as minister for government.

Reportedly Palencia formally requested her naturalization only on 20 November, three days before Noboa's inauguration...

[Sir John Johns]

Operation Metastasis

Attorney-general Diana Salazar has led on 14 December a vast police operation in relation with the presumed existence of a corruption network having operated inside the state institutions and working hand in hand with one of the country’s top drug trafficker, the late Leandro Norero. Named ‘Metastasis’ in order to underline the penetration of the state institutions by organized crime, the operation has led to the arrests of 30 suspects, the issuing of arrest warrants against 8 additional persons and the conduct of over 75 raids in 7 provinces. The Metastasis Case has arise from the exploitation of two phones belonging to Norero, strongly suspected of having been the main financier and money launderer of three drug gangs (Los Lobos, Los Tiguerones, Los Chone Killers) and having enjoyed ties with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Norero, aka ‘El Patrón’, was arrested by the Ecuadorian police in May 2022 after having evaded Ecuadorian and Peruvian justices for years (even going as far as faking his own death) before being assassinated in his cell on October 2022 during a prison riot.

The arrest of the president of the Judicature Council

Among the arrested persons, the biggest name is Wilman Terán, the president of the Judicature Council since last February. The police has found in Terán’s home some $25,000 in cash (in the form of $100 and $20 banknotes) and also raided the headquarters of the Judicature Council to seize computers and records.

Terán is a controversial figure, accused of being aligned with the RC even if previously signed as a judge in the National Court of Justice (CNJ) the sentencing of Correa to eight years in jail in the Sobornos 2012-16 case. Few days before his arrest, the Construye parliamentary caucus has filed a formal request to start a juicio político (impeachment/censure trial) against Terán to remove him from the Judicature Council in reason of his ‘unconventional’ management of the justice system (like the removal without a quorum of a judge investigation other members of the Judicature Council).

The arrest of Terán is happening in the middle of the competitive examinations hold to renew the CNJ and organized under the helm of the Judicature Council, a very important process at the core of a conflict between the various political factions to take control of the courts and influence judicial decision in a way favorable to their interests. The selection process held under Terán, which should be completed by next February, has been criticized since weeks by various right-wing sectors, several associations of magistrates as well as part of the outgoing CNJ over a lack of transparency and a series of legal irregularities. The president of the CNJ is now calling for a complete nullification of the selection process, a move opposed by the RC.

The charges faced by Terán are however totally unrelated to his tenure as president of the Judicature and the alleged offenses committed by Terán dated back from the time he was a judge in the CNJ. According to the attorney-general, Terán would have negotiated justice rulings favorable to Norero and his inner circle in exchange of consequent sums of money.

The other court officials arrested

Members of the judiciary also arrested during Metastasis Operation are including a public official of the Judicature Council, nine judges or former judges, three public prosecutors and two public servants in the Guayas provincial justice administration, all accused of having intervened in favor of Norero or having advised the drug lord in exchange of money, freebies or nights with ‘attractive women’.

The official of the Judicature Council who was working in the CNJ under Terán is accused of having served as a middle-man between Terán and the lawyers of Norero during the negotiations to influence the judiciary decisions. Among the arrested judges, two are belonging to the Cotopaxi jurisdiction and are accused of having intervened to release from prison the sister of Norero. Another one is working in the Guayas jurisdiction and is accused of having issued rulings in favor of Norero and his associates in the money laundering case involving the drug lord’s economic activities in exchange of money and a condo next to the beach. That very same judge had previously cleared Dalo Bucaram and his wife of any wrongdoings in their trial for corruption related to the overpricing in the sales of medical devices to several public hospitals in Guayas during the pandemics.

Two other arrested judges were working in the Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas jurisdiction, a jurisdiction a lawyer of Norero claimed in the phone conversations to fully control. One of the judges of Santo Domingo released two high-ranking members of the Los Lobos gang prosecuted for homicide and happens to be the same judge who ordered the release from prison of Jorge Glas in November 2022. The other judge in Santo Domingo jurisdiction has been removed in last January by the Judicature Council for ‘obvious negligence’ after having ruled in favor of returning assets seized by the justice to the Norero clan; this very same judge had intervened in November 2022 to reinstate the pro-Lasso CPCCS councilors who had been impeached by the RC-led parliamentary coalition.

The policemen arrested

After Terán, the most well-known name is the one of Pablo Ramírez, a police general who was holding the job of director for citizens’ security in the national police leadership until last 4 December when he gave his resignation at the request of President Noboa. Ramírez is accused of having bestowed the jailed Norero a series of privileges when during his time as director of the SNAI (prison administration) between December 2021 and October 2022. During the short tenure of Ramírez at the helm of the SNAI, four prison massacres took place, including the one during which Norero was killed. The death of the drug lord led to the resignation of Ramírez from the SNAI and his immediate reassignment as national director of the anti-narcotic police unit.

Two employees of the SNAI and eight policemen were also among the arrested suspects, including the head of the Samborondón police district who is accused of having provided information to the jailed Norero and having organized in coordination with the drug lord the removal of expansive art objects from the villa of Norero under the disguise of ‘police operations’. Several of the policemen are for their part accused of having altered evidences against Norero at the request of the drug lord’s legal adviser, ‘alias Estimado’.

The lawyers arrested

Also accused in the Metastasis Case are six lawyers, suspected of having served as go-betweens between Norero and the corrupt magistrates to negotiate and pay kickbacks or having acted as testaferros (straw men) in the management of Norero’s legal companies and the laundering of drug money. Among them is Christian Romero, currently on the run, who defended in courts, in addition to Norero, people like Jorge Glas, Dalo and Abdalá Bucaram or, another suspect in the Metastasis Case also on the run, Daniel Salcedo. This latter, who has been released from prison on last 9 December, is a political operative tied to the Bucaram family who has been sentenced in the public hospitals corruption case.

Norero behind prominent assassinations?

At the arraignment, Salazar made public various excerpts of the some 14,000 pages of transcripts of chats and phone conversations of Norero documenting the crimes and illegal activities of the drug lord. According to the transcripts, Norero was in business with Agustín Intriago, the right-wing independent mayor of Manta assassinated in last July, with the municipality of Manta being seemingly used to launder money. Norero would also have discussed the acquisition of weapons with Daniel Salcedo, seemingly one of his close associates.

The transcripts also reveal some of the schemes mounted by Norero to get rid of various individuals. Beginning with one of the prosecutors investigating the money laundering case that Norero wanted dead or mentioned a plan to get her reputation tarnished through a dirty press campaign involving the kind of trashy website La Posta (which exposed corruption in the hospitals sectors and the connection of Lasso’s brother-in-law with the Albanian mafia); Andersson Boscán, the editor of La Posta has denied any ties with the late drug lord.

In one of the transcripts, Norero is also claiming responsibility for the assassination of Harrison Salcedo, a well-know lawyer killed in April 2021, apparently guilty of having insulted Norero’s mother. Apparently Norero was also believing that Salcedo was associated with two leaders of the Los Choneros rival gang in an attempt to blackmail him. At the time of his death, Salcedo was facing legal proceedings over the irregular release from jail of one of his clients, ‘alias Rasquiña’, the historical leader of the Los Choneros. ‘Rasquiña’ had himself been assassinated in December 2020, shortly after his release from jail. Among the other clients of Salcedo were Jorge Glas (yeah again) and, more interestingly, Dritan Rexhepi, an Albanian mobster wanted by Interpol who was inexplicably released from his Ecuadorian jail in 2021 and totally vanished until last month when arrested in Turkey traveling under a Colombian passport and using a false identity.

According to the transcripts, Norero would also be behind the assassination in August 2022 (so when he was imprisoned) of Gerardo Delgado, a journalist based in Manta and then a RC candidate for a seat of municipal councilor. Later during the election campaign, the RC unsuccessfully tried to exploit the – now seemingly confirmed by the transcripts – accusations of Villavicencio about the alleged ties between Agustín Intriago and Norero to defeat the incumbent mayor. But other excerpts of the transcripts would suggest that Delgado may have been ‘mistakenly’ assassinated, having been confused by Norero’s henchmen with another Manta local journalist who had compromising videos about the drug lord.

Finally, the transcripts would reveal that Norero was closely watching Fernando Villavicencio due to his revelations about the cases of corruption in health sector and requested one of his lawyers the personal phone number of the journalist-turn-politician in order to ‘sent it to the boys’. ‘Alias Estimado’ would also have reached an adviser of Villavicencio who would have tell him that Norero would be left alone if ‘they gave him 2,000’.

The US support to Diana Salazar

The Metastasis Operation took place just a week after a public declaration made by the US ambassador in Ecuador. In said declaration, Michael Fitzpatrick denounced the supposed infiltration of organized crime inside the Ecuadorian justice, the use of unnamed media outlets by narcos to derail justice investigations and resort to blackmail as well as the laundering of drug money into legal economic activities, mentioning notably soccer clubs (possibly a reference to the Guayaquil’s Nueve de Octubre soccer club whose president for life and technical director is Dalo Bucaram and which at one time had a public health contractor among its shareholders).

The intervention of the US ambassador received then some criticisms about the unwillingness of the diplomat to provide specific details about the suspects, the media outlets or the companies tied to drug trafficking and was also considered by nationalist sectors as an infringement on Ecuador's national sovereignty. In retrospect, it may have been a way to display public support to Salazar in the upcoming Metastasis Operation and to force Noboa's hand. Salazar had received back in 2021 an 'Anticorruption Champion Award' from the Biden administration.

The irony is that the United States has more than its fair share of responsability in the ongoing insecurity in Ecuador being the largest cocaine consumer market, the main provider of firearms used by Ecuadorian criminals and the prime location for the laundry of dirty money as shown by the countless property investments made by corrupt Ecuadorian politicians and officials in Florida.

The political consequences

The only suspect directly involved into politics is Salcedo whom the now disappeared party of the Bucaram family (Fuerza Ecuador) attempted to register as a parliamentary candidate in 2021 in order to prevent his indictment in the hospitals corruption case. Nevertheless the figure of Jorge Glas is visible between the lines as several of his lawyers are appearing among the suspects and the former vice president benefited from a release from prison thanks to the abuse of the habeas corpus provision just like several gang leaders, the final release from prison having been bestowed by a judge arrested during the Metastasis Operation.

Attorney-General Diana Salazar has publicly criticized Rafael Correa for having warned in a tweet about the imminence of the judicial raids, several hours before their beginning, and blamed the former president for the inability of the police to arrest several suspects, notably Salcedo and Romero.

https://twitter.com/MashiRafael/status/1734974375621689535

A reliable contact informs us that today at dawn a large and national raid will be carried out against people who are annoying the 10/20*. They have designated 57 prosecutors for the operation. The operation is aiming at obstructing the selection process of the Judicature Council.

*‘10/20’ is the nickname given by Correa to Salazar in reference to the grade she had obtained in the competitive written examination during the selection process after which she became the attorney-general, a proof according to Correa of her lack of merits to hold the job. The selection process includes, in addition to the written examination (20 points), an oral examination (30 points) and a grade attributed to the candidate’s résumé (50 points) for a total of 100 points. Salazar received a grade of 88.17, the highest among candidates so, even if these selection processes are kind of a joke, nothing particularly scandalous in regard to the legal requirements in the appointment of Salazar.

The possibility of a prosecution of Correa for ‘diffusion of reserved information’ or even ‘obstruction of justice’ has been evoked in the press.

Diana Salazar and the Metastasis Operation have received the public support of President Noboa, who is hence dubiously trying to attribute the merit of the anti-corruption crackdown on his action just as a particularly shocking crime (four children being savagely killed by hitmen in southern Guayaquil) has exposed the persisting powerlessness of the government to contain criminality. Also supportive of Salazar is Henry Kronfle, the PSC president of the National Assembly. Conversely, the RC has denounced a ‘coup’ from Salazar in order to derail the selection process of the Judicature Council and take over the whole judicial apparatus.

Under the chairmanship of Pamela Aguirre (RC), the oversight commission of the National Assembly has do its best to accelerate the opening of a juicio político by dropping or suspending requests for other juicios políticos dating back from the previous legislature (against the entire CNE; against Patricio Carrillo and Diego Ordóñez over the María Bélen Bernal femicide case; against the ministers of transportation and social inclusion under Lasso; and against the previous president of the Judicature Council). Still pending are requests to censure/impeach Fernando Santos (energy minister under Lasso blamed for the electricity black-outs), Juan Zapata (interior minister under Lasso blamed for the insecurity crisis), Wilman Terán and two other members of the Judicature Council and, of course, one against Salazar. The resumption of the impeachment process against Lasso has been for its part totally abandoned, the assemblymen voting instead to declare the former president ‘politically responsible for the constitutional violation of graft’.

The Metastasis Operation could precipitate a rupture between Noboa and the RC as both have a different assessment of Diana Salazar and her job as attorney-general. Such rupture would hamper the ability of the president to get bills passed in the legislature. On the other hand, Salazar’s position as attorney-general is probably consolidated and the chance of her being impeached may have decreased, especially as her removal could be devastating among public opinion as she has emerged as the only public figure ‘doing something’ against criminality (corruption of the justice, police and prison administration is an open secret). Meaning her removal would undermine the popularity of Noboa and the PSC.

Now it remains to see if this wave of arrests is leading to actual sentencing (not taking shape when a judge had already rejected preventive detention for Pablo Ramírez, who is hence remaining free) and if the credibility of the accusations of Salazar isn’t undermined by subsequent developments.

[Sir John Johns]

Political earthquake in sight.

* Jorge Glas has taken refuge in the Mexican embassy in Quito and will certainly request political asylum to Mexico. The AMLO administration has previously granted asylum to several RC leaders, some sentenced for corruption or ‘incitement’, others not officially prosecuted by the Ecuadorian justice.

Shortly before, the Attorney-General’s Office has issued an order to locate and detain the former vice-president in relation to an undisclosed judicial case. It was later indicated that the judicial case was about suspicions of corruption related to the reconstruction in Manabí province after the 2016 earthquake.

* But in televised interview, Diana Salazar claimed that the chats of Norero have revealed that the drug lord has paid $250,000 to obtain the releases from prison of both Jorge Glas and Daniel Salcedo and was expecting favors in exchange ‘when Mr. Jorge Glas will be president’.

* The Attorney-General’s Office has beginning publishing on its website (which has crashed due to the excessive number of connections) the chats obtained from Norero’s phones.

* In a discussion between Norero and a corrupt judicial official are discussed the fact that María Fernanda Vargas, an OnlyFans model elected the RC mayor of Simón Bolívar, Guayas, in last February, had been sent by Norero ‘on missions’ and see ‘weapons’. The corrupt judicial official also mentioned an upcoming ‘meeting with RC’ in Mexico at the request of the said ‘RC’. Norero then asked the corrupt judicial official to ‘sent his regards to the Mashi’.

* Other chats are revealing that Norero was communicating with Andersson Boscán, the editor of La Posta and was angry at Villavicencio involving him in a corruption scandal in the customs Norero said isn't concerning him as he never 'worked' in the customs. Boscán had previously requested Norero informations about the customs but expressed his disdain for 'the smuggling and drugs part' being only interested into the political side affecting the Lasso administration.

* Norero was also in contact with ‘Daddy Yankee’, identified as Xavier Jordán, a shady businessman sentenced in abstentia in the hospitals corruption case and currently living in Florida. Jordán would have requested Norero to watch and follow Villavicencio.

* Also appearing in the chats, a discussion between Norero and Diego Ordóñez, the secretary for public safety in the Lasso administration during which Ordóñez proposed arrangements to Norero.

* The National Assembly has just passed a resolution approving the job accomplished by Diana Salazar in the Metastasis Operation with only the RC bench voting against/abstaining.

[MRCVzla]

Just as a remainder, in the middle of the State of Emergency against the government-declared terrorist narco-criminal organizations (which of one of its infamous highlights was the takeover of a national TV station in January). The CNE by suggestion of President Noboa called a Referendum and Popular Consultation to held in April 21, 13.6 million of ecuatorians are called to vote, the questions are all related to the security problem:

Referendum Questions
Partial Reform (Opinion 7-22 RC Constitutional Court - question processed by the National Assembly, initiative of Lasso' prior government to reform Article 158 of the Constitution-)
A) Do you agree with allowing the complementary support of the Armed Forces in the functions of the National Police to combat organized crime, partially reforming the Constitution in accordance with the provisions of Annex 1?
(Introductory sentence: Currently, the Armed Forces cannot support the National Police in the internal protection and maintenance of public order, unless there is a declaration of a state of emergency)

Constitutional Amendment (Executive Decree No. 163)
1) Do you agree with allowing the extradition of Ecuadorians, with the conditions, requirements, restrictions and impediments established in the Constitution, international instruments and in the Law, amending the Constitution and reforming the laws, in accordance with Annex 1?
2) Do you agree with the establishment of specialized judiciaries in constitutional matters, both in first and second instance, for the knowledge of the jurisdictional guarantees that correspond to them, amending the Constitution and reforming the Organic Law of Jurisdictional Guarantees and Constitutional Control , according to Annex 2?
3) Do you agree that the Ecuadorian State recognizes international arbitration as a method to resolve investment, contractual or commercial disputes?
4) Do you agree with amending the Constitution of the Republic and reforming the Labor Code for the fixed-term and hourly employment contract, when it is concluded for the first time between the same employer and worker, without affecting the acquired rights of workers, in accordance with Annex 4?

Popular Consultation Questions (Executive Decree No. 162)
1) Do you agree that the Armed Forces carry out control of weapons, ammunition, explosives and accessories, permanently, on the routes, paths, roads and corridors authorized for entry to social rehabilitation centers?
2) Do you agree with increasing the penalties for the crimes of (I) terrorism and its financing, (II) illicit production and trafficking of scheduled substances subject to control, (III) organized crime, (IV) murder, (V) hitmen, (VI) human trafficking, (VII) kidnapping for ransom, (VIII) arms trafficking, (IX) money laundering and (X) illicit activity of mining resources, reforming the Comprehensive Organic Penal Code in accordance with the Annex of the question?
3) Do you agree that people deprived of liberty serve their entire sentence within the social rehabilitation center for the crimes detailed in the Annex to the question, reforming the Comprehensive Organic Penal Code as stated in the aforementioned Annex? ?
4) Do you agree with criminalizing the crime of possession or carrying of weapons, ammunition or components that are for the exclusive use of the Armed Forces or the National Police, without affecting firearms permitted for civilian use, reforming the Comprehensive Organic Penal Code according to the Annex to the question?
5) Do you agree that weapons, their parts or pieces, explosives, ammunition or accessories that were instruments or material objects of a crime, can be destined for the immediate use of the National Police or the Armed Forces, reforming the Organic Code Comprehensive Criminal Code according to the Annex to the question?
6) Do you agree that the State proceeds to be the holder (owner) of assets of illicit or unjustified origin, simplifying the procedure of the Organic Law of Asset Forfeiture, according to the Annex to the question?

Supporting YES in all the questions (government position): Construye, CREO, PID (part of ADN)
Supporting NO in all or some questions: Pachakutik (NO at all), UP (questions 4 and 5), PSE (question 5)
Supporting YES in some and NO in others: AMIGO (NO at question 4 and 5, YES in the others)

With more than 100 days in office, Noboa accomplished most of his agenda thanks to the support in Parliament by correísmo and PSC, resumed in five major initiatives:
1. A first economic efficiency project, in that, incentives were created for companies that provide jobs to young people and the free zone regime was modified.
2. The Organic Law of Energy Competitiveness , by which the energy efficiency fund was created to finance different initiatives, such as energy saving campaigns, energy management systems, energy, projects to replace equipment, machinery and appliances.
3. The Organic Law to Confront the Internal Armed Conflict, the Social and Economic Crisis. In it, the increase in the value added tax (VAT) from 12% to 15% was proposed to cover the cost of the internal armed conflict that the president declared in the midst of a state of emergency, three days before, due to the resurgence of violence. criminal in the country. The VAT was not approved at the parliamentary debate, but the creation of special contributions to the profits of banks and companies was. However, with a partial veto, Noboa insisted on increasing one point of that tax permanently and up to two more if the fiscal fund required it. The VAT will start at 15% from April 1, because the country needs resources to cover the expenses of the armed conflict, but also the arrears with suppliers, local governments and aid for the sectors flooded by the winter rains.
4. The Constitution allows the president to send several urgent bills when there are states of exception, which is why Noboa delivered the Law for the Savings and Monetization of Economic Resources for the Financing of the Fight against Corruption. This reforms are made to the law on asset forfeiture and public procurement.
5. The Urgent Economic Law for the Strengthening of Tourist Activities and the Promotion of Employment, just approved to process at parliament. This proposes a series of benefits and tax incentives for tour operators and airlines.

Noboa assured that 50,000 jobs have already been generated for young people between 18 and 29 years old as a result of the economic efficiency law. According to a survey by the Cedatos company, carried out between February 19 and 22, 2024, before Noboa's decision to set the VAT at 15% became known, 81.4% approved of President Noboa's management, 16.1% expressed disapproval and 2.5% abstained from giving an opinion. (all this part, source from [url:https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/politica/daniel-noboa-cien-dias-en-el-poder-leyes-asamblea-nacional-nota/]EL UNIVERSO[/url])

Also the date of the 2025 general election is also known, First round of the Presidential election and Parliamentary elections wil be in February 9, 2025. Noboa has been vocal to want reelection and the upcoming referendum maybe the kickstarter of his campaign.

[Sadader]

So remembering back to Macroeconomics 101, it looks like Noboa is doomed...

Noboa has done an incredible job. Enduring change will be harder but so far he's way beyond my expectations; he's implemented every difficult policy in spite (or because of) the security crisis. Maybe Vega even uses this forum

The USD bonds ($17bn total) have risen in price by 50% since I wrote the above comment, so investors think Noboa has likely evaded default and catastrophe

https://www.boerse-frankfurt.de/bond/xs2214238953-ecuador-republik-3-5-20-35

[Sir John Johns]

In what seems to be a risky and dangerous political gamble happening two weeks before the referendum, President Noboa has ordered a joint army and police operation to arrest former VP Jorge Glas in the premises of the Mexican embassy in Quito as part on an escalating dispute with the López Obrador administration.

Earlier, the Noboa administration had ordered the expulsion of the Mexican ambassador (actually a chargé d’affaires) in the wake of public declarations made by AMLO strongly suggesting that the assassination of Villavicencio was organized to hamper a victory of Luisa González in the 2023 presidential election. The declarations of the Mexican president were strongly rejected by the Ecuadorian government as well as by the relatives of the assassinated journalist-turn-politician.

Shortly thereafter, it was learned that the Mexican government had granted Glas political asylum on the ground the former vice president was the target of political persecution and it seems the main point of the intervention in the Mexican embassy was to prevent a repeat of what happened in March 2023 when a former minister of Correa, María de los Ángeles Duarte, who had taken refuge into the Argentinian embassy in Quito to avoid prison for corruption, managed to flee Ecuador and reach Venezuela, presumably with the active help of the Argentinian government hence triggering a diplomatic crisis with the government of Alberto Fernández. Part of a regional tendency to abuse political asylum to protect politicians sentenced in corruption cases (see Panamanian corrupt piece of sh!t Ricardo Martinelli who has been recently granted political asylum by Nicaragua).

The Noboa administration has claimed that the awarding of political asylum to Glas is a violation of the Caracas convention on political asylum and stated having acted to prevent an ‘imminent fleeing’ of the former vice president.

The raid in the embassy has triggered a major diplomatic crisis, leading to the breaking of diplomatic ties between Ecuador and Mexico, subsequently joined by Nicaragua (which itself illegally raided the premises of the OAS in Managua in 2022). The Ecuadorian government has received zero support from other countries, being criticized by the Petro, Lula, Maduro, Boric but also the Milei, Lacalle and Biden administrations as well as the OAS and the Mercosur parliament.

Noboa’s decision has also been largely rejected by Ecuadorian legal experts and by various politicians, in first place by the RC (obviously) which has announced it is entering into open opposition to the president, hence provoking the end of the parliamentary informal pact which has enabled the approvals of an increase in VAT rates, a law on tourism mainly consisting in tax deductions (approved by seven RC legislators – including bigwigs like Pierina Correa, Pamela Aguirre or Marcela Holguín – against the party lines) or a free trade agreement with China. Christian Zurita also criticized the move while the PSC and Construye have remain so far silent on the issue.

The raid on the embassy is just the latest of a series of very embarrassing foreign policy setbacks illustrating the amateurism of the Noboa diplomacy:

- the appointment of the estranged vice president Verónica Abad to the embassy in Tel Aviv (with prohibition to return in Ecuador) to conduct a totally bogus peace mission in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a way to get rid of a political rival (the budget of the vice-presidency has been entirely slashed on the grounds of ‘austerity’ with Noboa even refusing to provide a security team for Abad). The vice president not even residing in the country is truly an unbelievable aberration and not the sign of a healthy legal and constitutional environment.

- the failure of an ill-conceived deal to transfer Russian military equipment (dubbed as ‘scrap’) to the United States for provision of the Ukrainian army in exchange of US helicopters and assistance against organized crime. The deal had to be dropped after Russia suspended in retaliation banana imports from Ecuador on dubious sanitary grounds.

- the inability to appoint a successor to Ivonne Baki (moved to the post of ambassador in France) at the office of ambassador in the United States, the initial pick of the Noboa administration having been opposed by Washington due to her inexperience (anyway, turns out she hasn’t even the legal minimum age to serve as an Ecuadorian ambassador). Meaning the job is vacant for two months now which is a bit problematic when you have decide to make the United States your main foreign partner.

- the environment minister, Sade Fritschi, who also faced many criticisms for her inexperience and presumed lack of competences (like a recent declaration in which she described Amazon as a country and had clearly no idea of what she was talking about), was at the center of a controversy last month for meeting representatives of Kailaasa, a fictitious nation created by a Hindu cult pretending to have purchased an island somewhere in South America. Aggravating factor: three months before, a Paraguayan official was already fooled by that same cult (and forced to resign).


But if the raid could be blamed on a messy foreign policy, it could be also explained by internal political decisions, Noboa seemingly intending to emulate what Correa did in 2008 (also few days before a crucial referendum), when the then-president ordered the expulsion of Odebrecht from Ecuador over allegations of corruption and construction defects in its hydro plants, an expulsion that included the seizing of the company’s assets and the sequestration of its local directors by the military.

It is a way to reassert the though-on-crime position of the Noboa government in a context of upsurge in criminality, which is showing that militarization, state of emergency and mass imprisonment aren’t the silver bullet to solve insecurity problems. 137 violent deaths have been recorded during the Holy Week holidays, including the kidnapping and massacre of five tourists in Puerto López, the shooting of a volleyball game in Guasmo Sur (Guayaquil) by gunmen with AK-47 rifles who killed ten people and injured nine others, an armed attack in the Amazon town of Joya de los Sachas (Sucumbíos) during which four persons were killed or a prison riot in the Guayas Regional Prison (the first riot since January) aired live on TikTok by inmates which ended in the deaths of three prisoners. Also, as I have mentioned in another thread, extortion and kidnapping have reached unprecedented levels in spite of the state of emergency, a situation the Noboa government tried to explain by 'it's also increasing in other South American countries'.

This is also taking place while politically sensitive legal cases have pilled up in the latest months and are revealing the extent of political, judicial and narco corruption in the country: ‘Metástasis’ Case (connections of Leandro Norero with judicial, economic and political actors which have led to the formal indictment of the fugitive Ronny Aleaga), ‘Purga’ Case (takeover of the Guayas provincial justice system by the now imprisoned former PSC assemblyman Pablo Muentes to unlawfully obtain financial compensations or illegally appropriate lands), ‘Amistad’ Case (presumed money laundering scheme operated by a lawyer close to Rafael Correa), ‘Plaga’ Case (illegal network operating in the justice system to grant unduly prison releases to criminals in exchange of bribes), ‘Nene’ Case (arrest of the son of vice president Verónica Abad on suspicions of influence peddling), ‘Independencia Judicial’ Case (charges of obstruction of justice filed against three members of the Judicature Council).

The departure of Glas to Mexico could have been interpreted as an evidence of an unholy pact with the RC and as a weakness of President Noboa in his professed crackdown on criminality.


Finally, the raid on the Mexican embassy is not that surprising for a government which thinks that the fight against criminality (labeled as ‘terrorism’) justifies the resort to exceptional measures and considers this is excusing any abuse committed by the military and the police.

The risk of an authoritarian drift in Ecuador under Noboa is real (even if the president is clearly not a very talented political strategist – one of the questions initially submitted to referendum was the (re)legalization of casinos and gambling establishments the government finally withdrawn after realizing that putting such question to vote when money laundering scandals were popping up everywhere wasn’t the best idea – nor can rely on powerful and competent allies both factors undermining him in case of an attempt to emulate Bukele or Ortega in concentrating power into his hands).

There has been some controversy over transfer of the son of the vice-president to the maximum security prison of La Roca, considering he is only involved in a minor corruption scandal and is only in preventive detention. The whole case may be used as a pretext to impeach Verónica Abad, the president of Ecuador being required by the Constitution to take a leave and be replaced by the vice-president in an acting capacity in case he is running for reelection. Noboa has indeed announced he would run for a full term in 2025.

Also worrying is the reversal of the acquittal of Ola Bini and his sentencing to one year in jail for ‘non-authorized attempted access to a computer system’ on sketchy evidence, a judicial ruling largely overshadowed by the raid on the embassy which took place the same day. The president of the court that sentenced Bini is investigated by the Fiscalía for presumed corruption…

https://twitter.com/olabini/status/1776585700663611868

More significantly, there have been allegations of police brutality in the repression of anti-mining protests in Palo Quemado (Cotopaxi province) as Noboa has decided to side with Canadian mining interests (contradicting his past environmentalist postures) and as the CONAIE and Leonidas Iza have engaged into a head-on opposition to the Noboa administration, trying to exploit the until recently fairly ambiguous political positioning of the RC.


For what it’s worth, polls have shown recently a decline in the approvals of Noboa (which reached historical heights in the wake of the January proclamation of state of internal armed conflict), if true probably the consequence of the upsurge in criminality, increase in the VAT rate, resurgence of electricity cuts and issues in the government communication and management. Polls have also indicated the possibility of a defeat in the referendum of the labor law reform. To take with loads of salt but this isn’t surprising it would be the most unpopular proposal.

[Sir John Johns]

The mayor of Camilo Ponce Enríquez (Azuay) has been assassinated by hitmen, another assassination of a local elected official happening in the most violent canton of the highlands and very likely connected to illegal mining: the assassinated mayor was a mining entrepreneur and the former chairman of the local chamber of mines. He survived a first assassination attempt in last October while his predecessor in office barely survived an assassination attempt in February 2023.

Another setback for Noboa, but not as bad as the ongoing energy crisis which is hardly hitting Ecuador since 15 April with massive and prolonged blackouts (up to over twenty hours in Naranjal where protests broke out). The problems in production and supply of electric power are so bad the government has ordered the closure of schools and decreed holiday in public and private sectors for two days, on 18 and 19 April. Were also reintroduced electricity rationing and scheduled hours-long power cuts in what is now the biggest electricity crisis since at least 2009.

The government has been widely decried for its lack of anticipation (it issued reassuring statements about the electricity situation just few days before the first blackouts started unannounced), its attempts to downplay the gravity of the situation (talking about ‘temporary disconnections’ when even large urban centers were deprived from electricity for hours) and, by contrast with the Lasso administration (itself not really a model of competence), its inability to issue timetables for power cuts or got the announced timetables respected and to prevent electricity cuts during the night.

As the electricity cuts could have put the results of the referendum into jeopardy, Noboa reacted in a particularly concerning way, proclaiming a state of emergency in the electricity sector and firing the energy minister against whom he announced a complaint will be filed on the grounds she allegedly deliberately concealed information about the actual energy situation. It was also announced that twenty one high officials in electricity sector would be investigated over their participation into a purported plot to undermine electricity sector for political aims and prosecuted for ‘obstruction of public services’ and ‘sabotage’. Noboa stated that persons involved in the alleged plot would be considered as ‘traitors to the country’ and ‘threats to national security’.

Not a single evidence has been presented to back the claims about a deliberate sabotage of the electricity sector and it is yet unclear if there will be actual judicial proceedings. Blackouts can be explained by the ongoing El Niño-induced drought in the region and its effects on the hydro-electric production (like the depletion of the Mazar reservoir, the largest one in the country) as well as by the recent decision of Colombia to suspend its exports of electricity towards Ecuador to address its own electricity supply difficulties (the ongoing rift stemming from the Mexican embassy raid isn’t helping things as Petro decided to suspend the Ecuadorian-Colombian joint cabinet meetings instituted in 2012 under Santos and Correa). Long-term causes are including a lack of public investment in the electricity sector, corruption, the negative effects of the destruction of the paramos on natural water storage and the excessive reliance on hydro power at the expense of other sources of electricity. The Noboa administration did nothing to address such problems.

The energy portfolio has been provisionally entrusted to the transportation minister, probably another confirmation of the difficulties of Noboa to pick vaguely competent persons to head his ministries.

The accusations of ‘sabotage’ thrown by Noboa are part of the broader trend of the president to resort to populist strongman rhetoric and confrontational and arrogant style and to adopt authoritarian means to champion his policies and attack critics. The raid on the Mexican embassy has been the peak of such strategy but since then Noboa has also publicly insulted academics who dared criticizing his security policies (‘there is a load of PhDs who attack us, they sound more like HP’ with ‘HP’ standing for hijos de p...) and filed through his labor minister a complaint against Rafael Correa for ‘treason to the country’ after the former president made harsh public declarations against Noboa and requested sanctions against Ecuador for the raid on the Mexican embassy (maybe not the smartest political move from Correa), a complaint assorted with a request to suspend the social network accounts of Correa. Add to that accusations from María Paula Romo about Noboa supposedly pressuring the Electoral Disputes Tribunal to revoke the registration of Romo’s party, Construye.

Due to unreliable polls and a fast-changing political situation, it is hard to predict what will be the outcome of the referendum. The general consensus seems that support will be lower for the two economic-related questions (hourly labor contracts and international arbitration for investment and business matters) which have been especially targeted by the CONAIE and the unions. A big question is whether the increasingly authoritarian and erratic attitude of the president, the mixed results of the government in its fight against gangs and the blackouts and the rise in VAT rate (into effect since 1 April) could led to a victory of the ‘no’ in one or more questions, something which was unthinkable just two weeks ago. The other one is how the parliamentary scene will reconfigure after the referendum as, even if approved, several proposals (a majority of the ones related to security matters) must still be sent by the president to the National Assembly to be debated and approved before entering into force; at the moment, Noboa has no reliable majority but a large victory in the referendum could trigger defections towards the pro-government caucus (they have actually already began with the recent exclusion of two PSC assemblymen and the departure of three RC legislators due to their pro-Noboa stances).

[Sir John Johns]

Jorge Maldonado, the mayor of Portovelo (El Oro), elected in 2023 for CREO, died in hospital this morning, shortly after being shot by hitmen in the street. Portovelo is another canton where illegal mining has turned into a major economic activity. Maldonado is the second mayor assassinated in less than 48 hours and the third one in less than a month.

[Sir John Johns]

The referendum to approve or reject eleven constitutional amendments and legal reforms is today.

The questions have been arranged on the paper ballot as follows:

A: authorization for the armed forces to assist the police in fight against organized crime
B: extradition of Ecuadorian nationals prosecuted for serious crimes
C: institution of specialized tribunals for judicial and constitutional guarantees matters
D: recognition of international arbitration to resolve commercial and investment disputes
E: legalization of fixed-term hourly labor contracts
F: authorization for armed forces to realize arms controls on roads and in detention facilities
G: increase in penalties for serious crimes
H: obligation for persons sentenced in serious crimes cases to serve the entirety of their prison sentence without access to semi-open or open regime
I: creation of a new offense for the illegal possession of arms and ammunition whose use is reserved to the armed and police forces
J: authorization for the armed forces and the police to immediately use seized and confiscated arms and ammunition
K: simplification of the proceeding enabling the state to confiscate assets of illicit or unwarranted origin

The voting process has been canceled in two countries (Mexico and Israel) for diplomatic or security reasons.

The government has ensured there will be no blackouts today as power cuts have impacted the country since a week ago, additionally provoking serious problems in supply of piped water in several neighborhoods of Quito. Whether such problems will influence the outcome of the referendum is very uncertain and it seems nobody has a clear picture of the current political situation and the extent of the support for Noboa, not helped by the disastrous record of the polling companies which incorrectly predicted a victory of the ‘yes’ in the 2023 referendum and failed to correctly assess the vote for Noboa in last year presidential first round.

The campaign has been widely considered as lackluster as attention in the medias in the last weeks has mostly focused on the narco-politics scandals, the upsurge in violent crime, the diplomatic crisis with Mexico and the energy crisis and as none of the major political forces (Noboa’s unregistered ADN, PSC, RC, Construye) registered to participate in the official televised campaign be it the ‘yes’ or the ‘no’.

Only a single polling institute, Infinity Estrategas, will release an exit poll, the four other polling companies qualified by the CNE having renounced for financial or material reason (in part because of the recent blackouts).

Polling stations close at 5:00 PM (Quito time) and the first results will be published on the CNE website starting from 7:00 to 7:30 PM.

[Sir John Johns]

Estrategas Infinity exit poll (with the usual caveats)

Question A: Yes 81.9% No 18.1%
Question B: Yes 74.3% No 25.7%
Question C: Yes 67.5% No 29.9%
Question D: Yes 40.6% No 59.4%
Question E: Yes 34.1% No 65.9%
Question F: Yes 78.5% No 21.5%
Question G: Yes 77.4% No 22.6%
Question H: Yes 76.6% No 23.5%
Question I: Yes 74.3% No 25.7%
Question J: Yes 74.4% No 25.6%
Question K: Yes 70.6% No 29.4%

The Noboa administration would have won the security-related questions in a landslide but also have been defeated on the two economy-related questions by quite large majorities.

Turnout has been officially confirmed at 72%, a sharp decrease from the 80.7% in 2023, 82.1% in 2018 and 77.4% in 2011.

[Sir John Johns]

‘Quick count’ results as given by the CNE (about 1% margin of error):

Question A: Yes 73.05%
Question B: Yes 65.11%
Question C: Yes 60.46%
Question D: No 64.88%
Question E: No 68.83%
Question F: Yes 70.72%
Question G: Yes 68.23%
Question H: Yes 67.69%
Question I: Yes 64.66%
Question J: Yes 64.80%
Question K: Yes 61.97%

Results with 51.5% counted and certified as given by the CNE official website (https://consulta2024.cne.gob.ec/)

Question A: Yes 72.81%
Question B: Yes 64.83%
Question C: Yes 60.41%
Question D: No 64.88%
Question E: No 68.86%
Question F: Yes 70.44%
Question G: Yes 68.05%
Question H: Yes 67.44%
Question I: Yes 64.57%
Question J: Yes 64.82%
Question K: Yes 61.70%

Security-related proposals easily passed while the international arbitration and hourly employment contract were rejected. At provincial level (with incomplete results), it seems that questions D and E were only approved in the three expats constituencies while the only provinces where security-related proposals were rejected are Manabí (Correísta stronghold: questions C, I, J and K were defeated) and the northern Amazon provinces of Sucumbíos (all proposals rejected but questions A and F) and Orellana (questions C and K defeated).

[Sir John Johns]

Results with 99.6% counted:

Question A: Yes 72.26%
Question B: Yes 64.35%
Question C: Yes 59.93%
Question D: No 65.18%
Question E: No 69.53%
Question F: Yes 69.68%
Question G: Yes 67.35%
Question H: Yes 66.69%
Question I: Yes 63.91%
Question J: Yes 64.07%
Question K: Yes 61.01%

First time since 1994 than an omnibus referendum/popular consultation ends with a split vote.

The Noboa administration (‘if you won 9 to 2, you won’ in Noboa’s words) and the left (Correísmo and the CONAIE) have both claimed victory even if the situation is obviously not that simple. The vote has been interpreted as a support for the security policies of Noboa and a rejection of his economic agenda, possibly as a reaction to his poor handling of the electricity crisis.

The National Assembly will have in the next weeks to elaborate a new corresponding legal regulation based on the proposals (bar question F) approved in the referendum and passed it by a majority in the parliament.



A bit of elaboration about the not very encouraging political situation.

As mentioned earlier, the collapse of the informal alliance between the RC, the PSC and the ruling ADN may complicate matters and led to shameless political horsetrading inside the parliament. The establishment of specialized judiciaries as provided by question C will be probably further delayed due to the ongoing institutional chaos in the Judicature Council (in charge of organizing the examinations to recruit new judges).

Such change in legal framework, even if passed, may be not enough or could even be proved useless as the problems of funding, widespread corruption, lack of training of the military for its new policing duties and inability to even ensure the safety of public officials (a prison director was assassinated in Manabí the very same day than the referendum was hold; two dismembered bodies have been discovered in the vicinity of the home of Diana Salazar, possibly an intimidation attempt against the attorney-general) are remaining unaddressed.

Noboa may have also open too many political fronts at the same time, having alienated in the latest months all major political forces.

* The RC is obviously angered at the capture of Glas in the embassy of Mexico.

* The dispute with Construye dated back from early January when Noboa made disparaging comments on María Paula Romo, comparing her to a ‘Pokemon’ (due to her political evolution from anti-authoritarian New Left to law-and-order neoliberalism), to which Romo responded by stating that Pokemon are ‘changing for the best’ and indicating that Mewtwo was one of her favorite Pokemon. Such totally dispensable debate was terminated when reality hit back few days thereafter with riots in prisons and gang attacks but the rift between Noboa and Romo has deepened few hours before the referendum when the ADN issued a statement claiming the hourly employment contracts was included in the omnibus referendum at the sole request of Construye, possibly anticipating a defeat of that proposal in the referendum and putting all the blame of it on Construye.

* The PSC is unhappy with the defeat of the economic proposals in the referendum as well as with the alleged attempts from the government to incite defections inside the Social Christian caucus.

* Sectors in the far-right have been pissed up by the exiling of their darling, Verónica Abad, to Tel Aviv and appear to have at least some support in the Spanish far-right press as exemplified by the publication in El Debate of pretty dubious allegations about Noboa misbehaving during a trip in Spain during when he supposedly throw up banknotes in a restaurant of Madrid and requested to be brought to a party.

* The CONAIE and Pachakutik are sitting in the radical opposition over Noboa’s favoring the mining lobby, the brutal repress of protests in Cotopaxi and the government’s attempts of dividing the indigenous movement by buying the support of several local indigenous leaders (appointment to a government office of Marco Guatemal, a leader from Imbabura and rival of Iza for the presidency of the CONAIE; trip to Canada of Noboa with David Tankamash, the leader of the Interprovincial Federation of Shuar Centers, to sign an agreement with a mining company, agreement which led to violent clashes between rival indigenous groups and the removal of Tankamash by the Shuar local bases).

* Additionally, sectors of the center-right to center-left anti-Correa tendency (mostly represented in the intellectual circles and printed medias) have expressed growing concerns about the authoritarian turn of Noboa, noticing his style is very reminiscent of the one of Rafael Correa.

* Finally, the business community is certainly not much pleased with the ongoing electricity crisis, the diplomatic row with Mexico and the defeat of the hourly employment contracts and international arbitration in the referendum.

Since the beginning of the month, the president has been criticized for his authoritarian style by personalities as much different as Rafael Correa, Leonidas Iza, María Paula Romo and Christian Zurita.



Yet, Noboa has already managed to score a success on Monday when ‘Pico’, a leader of Los Lobos gang who specialized into contract killing and has been accused of plotting the assassination of Diana Salazar, was recaptured, four months after his evasion, in a cocoa plantation located about 150 kilometers from Quito, contradicting previous reports about his flight from the country or statements from his relatives claiming he was dead.

More importantly, Noboa can capitalize on the weakening of the main rival political forces which I have already alluded to.

* Correísmo may face what is its most serious crisis since the 2017 split with Moreno. The unconditional support provided to Jorge Glas has been internally questioned (notably by Marcela Aguiñaga and Mauro Andino, a RC-aligned political pundit who received in return a harsh rebuke by Correa on Twitter). The defection of two assemblymen, rumors of additional defections and calls to sanction the five remaining assemblymen who had voted against the party line in a vote on a government-sponsored bill on tourism aren’t easing the internal quarrels. One of the defectors, Xavier Jurado, had been previously accused of domestic violence but nonetheless received support from the RC leadership, much to the chagrin of feminist groups. The same RC leadership is now labeling as traitor and a corrupt man and is demanding he resign his seat.

Meanwhile in Florida, Carlos Pólit, the comptroller-general under Correa, has been convicted on Tuesday of money laundering charges, a blow to the Correísta political narrative about lawfare and ascent of Correa meaning the end of the particracy (Pólit was appointed on the quota of the PSP and confirmed in office two times by the Correa administration through manipulated competitve examinations). Tellingly, Pierina Correa openly lied when she pretended Pólit was appointed before the inauguration of her brother.

During the trial, witnesses mentioned among the officials who received bribes the name of Jorge Glas while also referring to previously unknown possible bribes. This could pave the way for judicial investigations in Ecuador against two former key members of the Correa administration: Pedro Solines (currently the RC mayor of Milagro, Guayas) and José Serrano (now estranged from Correa and relocated in Florida) who served as interior minister and president of the National Assembly until removed in 2018 in the wake of the leaking of a phone conversation he had with the by-then fugitive Pólit as part of a plot to prejudice the then-attorney-general and political rival.

* At this point, villavicencismo is basically dead as a political movement. After the rupture with Construye, Gente Buena has failed into turning into a real political party as Christian Zurita shown little appetite for day-to-day politics and as the unity of the movement has been undermined by internal opposition from Edwin Ortega, a far-right retired navy officer, as well as by the departure in last December of Andrea González Nader (the running-mate of Villavicencio). The latter has launched her own movement, Fuerza Valiente (FV), and announced her presidential candidacy, which have apparently met little enthusiasm. Neither FV nor Gente Buena are registered as political organizations meaning that they are currently barred from participating into the next elections.

* Construye is fighting a legal battle to keep its registration after a TCE judge has ordered the deregistration of the movement for not having presented its report on its financial accounts for the year 2022. A sanction considered by Construye but also by Jan Topic and several PSC bigwigs as disproportionate, such offense being supposedly punished with a simple fine. Similarly to the RC, Construye is undermined by the fact that María Paula Romo, is living abroad (in this case the United States) to evade potential judicial charges (actually, if you think about it, Noboa and Iza are the only top-tier political leaders to reside in Ecuador and even Noboa is spending too much time in the United States for private matters). The Correísta past of Romo as well as her previous stances on feminism, abortion and drug legalization may also be uncomfortable for several sectors of the right-constituency Construye is now courting.

* The PSC is for its part in big trouble in the wake of the arrest of Pablo Muentes in relation to the Caso Purga. Muentes is accused to have influenced the Guayas judicial system to not only unduly obtain a financial compensation from a state-owned bank but also to sent in prison a humble indigenous woman from Durán he had stole the plot of land. The PSC issued statements condemning Muentes, denying knowledge about his illegal activities and ensuring full support to Diana Salazar notwithstanding the closeness of Muentes with Jaime Nebot and public declarations made by a local judge about the leader of the PSC being fully aware of the manipulation of the justice system by Muentes.

Rivals of the PSC have already start posting pictures of an election meeting where Muentes can be seen next to Jan Topic as a way to undermine the most likely PSC presidential candidate for 2025 at this point.

As if it wasn’t enough, the comptroller-general’s office has sanctioned last week Cynthia Viteri as well as nine other officials in the former PSC municipality of Guayaquil with two years of ineligibility for public office. After a complaint from the new RC administration, illegal nepotistic practices inside the Viteri administration were unearthed, leading to the sanctioning of the former mayor. Viteri is facing four pending judicial investigations in cases of alleged embezzlement, irregular acquisition of lands and crimes against water.


Besides of the vote on the framework regulating the proposals passed by referendum, the National Assembly is expected to debate in May or June the impeachment of Diana Salazar which is advocated by the RC and officially opposed by the other main parties (even if last-minute surprise may not be excluded). Before that legislators should decide on ‘impeachments’ of Fernando Santos Alvite (energy minister under Lasso blamed for the electricity crisis) and Juan Zapata (interior minister under Lasso blamed for the security crisis).

The parliamentary agenda has been clogged up with a series of additional requests for impeachment which is doomed to be concluded only in the next legislature. After Santos Alvite, Zapata and Salazar, are planned to be examined requests of impeachment trials against, in that order, three former members of the Judicature Council, Sebastián Corral (secretary of administration under Lasso for an alleged breach of duty), Andrea Montalvo (secretary of higher education under Lasso), Pablo Arosemena (finance minister under Lasso), Gabriela Sommerfeld (current foreign minister, for her responsibility in the raid on the Mexican embassy) and Mónica Palencia (minister of government until very recently when moved to the interior ministry; same motive than Sommerfeld). Montalvo and Arosemena were included in the list of (ex-)officials to be impeached as part of a maneuver of the ADN to delay the impeachment requests against ministers in the Noboa administration. For their parts, the PSC and Construye are attempting to add yet another name with Andrea Arrobo, the recently dismissed energy minister.