Ecuadorian elections (referendum, 21 April 2024)

[Sir John Johns]

* The big news is however that Guillermo Lasso will not running for reelection in next August

I suppose this makes it one of the less dishonorable departures from office as far as Ecuadorian presidents go. Somehow.

Hey, not so fast!

https://twitter.com/eluniversocom/status/1659704679511490562

The president hasn’t discarded a candidacy, sources close [to Lasso] say there has been a misunderstanding in the international interview.

From Alfonso Harb, a former legislator for the PSC and the PRIAN, a sports journalist, a businessman and a former president of the Barcelona Sporting Club who is also claiming to be a political analyst:

https://twitter.com/pochoharbEC/status/1659670626272006146

I has been able to investigate in spheres close to President Lasso and am in the informative capacity to indicate that what has been published by the Washington Post isn’t accurate. Most probably there has been a misinterpretation of the words of the head of state or a translation error. What he said was that in this moment he is thinking about the safety and the needs of the citizens. Hence, the participation of Lasso in the August 20 elections HAS NOT BEEN RULED OUT.

Obviously, this is beyond ridiculous but to be expected coming from an administration defined by its consistent amateurism and incompetence, especifically in the area of public relations. Yet f____ing up the announcement of the (non?-)candidacy of Lasso is a new low.

The final decision of Lasso about his potential candidacy should be announced in the next days, possibly during the mandatory ‘report to the Nation’ which must be made on 24 May, before the National Assembly says the Constitution. Except that, as there is no longer a legislature, this will be a simple public event in Quito.

[Sir John Johns]

Why is Yaku running for DSI and not MUPP?! A split in MUPP?! Will MUPP filed its own candidate?!

Yaku Pérez has left Pachakutik in May 2021, officially to protest against the parliamentary agreement between the indigenous party and CREO. He had however additional motivations, in first place the fact that Leonidas Iza (his nemesis inside the indigenous movement) was about to win the presidency of the CONAIE and become the best-placed candidate for the Pachakutik 2025 presidential nomination. Pérez unsuccessfully tried to register his own political party (‘Somos Agua’) before coming recently to an understanding with Gustavo Larrea, the owner of Democracia Sí Movement, who seems inclined to support Pérez’s second presidential bid. Larrea is himself too old and not enough popular (he is a pretty dull politician as well as an opportunist associated with both the Correa and Moreno administrations as well as the Bucaram presidency) to expect having a future in politics on his own (he received 0.4% of the vote in the last presidential election). The MDS could hence hoping winning seats in the legislature on the coattails of the more popular Pérez.

As for Pachakutik, it is for the moment, and just like the ID, plagued by internal divisions motivated by personal quarrels and disagreements over the strategy to follow. The party congress held in last April to elect a new national coordinator saw three candidates running: Guillermo Churuchumbi as the candidate of Iza; Cecilia Velasque, as the candidate of the outgoing coordination; Jorge Herrera, a former president of the CONAIE in the early 2010s. Churuchumbi has been elected with 355 votes against 289 for Velasque and 178 for Herrera; additionally, 113 blank votes and 20 null votes were cast.

So not a particularly convincing victory for Churuchumbi especially as, due to alleged irregularities and complaints from the losing candidates, the Pachakutik internal election tribunal has decided, two weeks ago, to just nullify the election of Churuchumbi and order the repeat of the election. Such decision has been been ignored by Churuchumbi and Iza and it is unclear when or even if a new election will take place to designate a new coordinator. So Pachakutik is finding itself without a recognized legal representative and that just as the selection of candidates is about to start: such situation is setting the stage for potential legal challenge against whoever is designated by the party to be the candidates in the presidential and legislative elections.

Not running a candidate in the presidential election would hurt too much Pachakutik in the legislative elections and undermine its pretense to be a big and ‘serious’ party to be thinkable. The endorsement of a candidate already ran by another party (like in 2017 with Paco Moncayo) or the nomination of a candidate outside the party (like in 1996, 2002 and 2013) cannot be totally excluded but would be clearly a step backwards.

I have see the name of Salvador Quishpe mentioned in various medias as a potential candidate but in case he is nominated I don’t think he will be endorsed by Iza and will probably be doomed to receive a poor result (he is an opportunist, has been accused of corruption and is too much associated to the parliamentary shenanigans of the last National Assembly). The most evident name is of course Iza himself, but he has remained so far silent over his intentions and, as mentioned, is challenged inside the party. In case he decide to run but doesn’t get the backing of Pachakutik he may possibly obtained the support of the UP, which is lacking a strong candidate for president and has already sponsored in last February the candidate of an ally of Iza for prefect of Cotopaxi against the official candidate of Pachakutik.

[Sir John Johns]

The PSC has issued a statement announcing it will not run a candidate coming from its ranks in the presidential election but will instead sponsor the candidacy of Jan Topic (who himself spells his name as Topić), an independent 40-year-old businessman and self-described expert in public security matters from Guayaquil. Topic, who has no previous political nor administrative experience, made public his presidential bid just few hours before the PSC released its statement.

https://twitter.com/jantopicecuador/status/1660375836464230404

For sure, Topic is an ‘interesting’ person. His credentials as an expert on international security and criminal matters appear mostly based on his experience as a former member of the French Foreign Legion and his past participation as ‘a soldier’ in wars in Syria, Ukraine (against Russia judging by recent ‘Slava Ukraini’ messages Topic posted on his Twitter account) and unspecified African countries. Topic claims being the founder of the largest security company in Ecuador.

Until few days ago, Jan Topic was also the main shareholder of Telconet, a telecommunication and technology company operating in Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala and Panama. Telconet is notably in charge of operating the undersea fiber-optic cable connecting Ecuador with Florida and is the only producer of fiber optic in Ecuador, making it a de facto private monopoly on the provision of that equipment in the country.

Jan Topic has just sold his actions in Telconet to his own father, Tomislav Topic, the founder and general manager of the company. In 2019, Tomislav has been investigated for possible money laundering in relation to his presumed involvement in the major corruption scheme set up by Jorge Glas and Ricardo Rivera, the uncle of Glas but also a former schoolmate of Tomislav in the polytechnic college of Guayaquil. Tomislav managed to avoid prosecution in the Odebrecht case by agreeing to hand over to the state anti-fraud unit the $13.5 million deposited by Rivera on an account belonging to Jan Topic. According to investigators, the money stemmed from a larger sum deposited on Rivera’s own account by a mysterious Glory International offshore company domiciled in Hong Kong and believed to have been used to transfer and launder money from kickbacks paid by private companies to Rivera and Glas in exchange of public contracts.

Tomislav pretended being unaware of the provenance of the money and denied being a business partner and a friend of Rivera despite evidence to the contrary. The existence of Glory International was revealed in 2016 during the tumultuous divorce of Tomislav that took place before a Miami court, the wife suspecting her future ex-husband of concealing part of his fortune in secret bank accounts having decided to go before a US court being herself a Florida resident and estimating an Ecuadorian court would be influenced by the political character of the case.

Seemingly, the division of family assets in the wake of the divorce didn’t go well as, in February 2019, Jan Topic was briefly detained by the police for attempted homicide, having been found in flagrante delicto of committing physical violence against his own brother (or half-brother) over the ownership of a house. The case was reclassified as intra-family violence but charges appear to have been quickly dropped.

A 2019 TV report on the incident:

Rivals of Jan Topic, in particular Fernando Villavicencio, have wasted no time to label the PSC candidate as a ‘Rambo’, a ‘mercenary’ and a chimbador only running to divide the right-wing vote and even alleged he is secretly in cahoots with the RC. Notwithstanding the fact that just one month ago, the Lasso administration seriously considered appointing Topic as secretary for state security.

Topic is already compared to Nayik Bukele for his strong focus on fight against criminality and his advocacy of mano dura to solve the issue of gang violence. Indeed, Topic has praised on his Twitter account the handling of crime by the Salvadorean leader. In the meantime, he is also cultivating a brand image of macho man and ‘alpha male’ at ease with guns; for example, this is the photograph various PSC bigwigs have chosen to illustrate their support to Topic:

https://twitter.com/VicenteAlmeydaJ/status/1660395777238106112

Considering how salient the issue of criminality and insecurity has became and the status of political outsider of Topic, he may have room to grow and establish himself as one of the major candidates.

In addition to the PSC and its leaders (Jaime Nebot, Esteban Torres), Topic has additionally received in the last hours the endorsement of Pedro Freile (who is hence renouncing to his own candidacy) and, more anecdotally, of Abdalá Bucaram, which is ironic not only because the former president is a criminal but also because of all the bad blood between him and Nebot, his longtime nemesis.


Also, Dalton Bacigalupo has already terminated his hopeless presidential candidacy to call for the constitution of a ‘multi-party force’ while Xavier Hervas has indicated he is not running because he ‘doesn’t have the time’.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Thanks for keeping us posted.

[Sir John Johns]

The CNE has published the schedule of the special elections to designate the president and the National Assembly for the remaining of the 2023-25 term. The new head of state and legislature will remain in office for only one year and a half, meaning there will be de facto transitional authorities which will certainly mostly focus on the 2025 general elections. In order to save financial and personal resources, the CNE has also decided to organize the referendum on oil extraction in the Yasuní National Park the same day than the special elections, maybe not a good news for democratic debate as the discussion on extractivism will be probably overshadow by the presidential election.

Key dates of the election schedule are the following:

- 28 May to 10 June: internal selection processes and registration of the candidates

- 6 August: publication of the final and complete lists of candidates, once it has been verified they are meeting legal requirements and once political organizations have been have the opportunity to designate new candidates in case the first ones have seen their candidacies rejected by the CNE

- 8 to 17 August: election campaign

- 13 August: televised debates

- 20 August: election of assemblymen, presidential first round and referendum on Yasuní

- 23 September: proclamation of the results

- 24 September to 12 October: presidential runoff campaign

- 1 October: president runoff televised debate

- 15 October: presidential runoff

- 26 October: inauguration of the authorities elected in the first round

- 30 November: inauguration of the president, in case a runoff has been necessary

Due to the lack of time and financial resources, the electoral registry and distribution of polling stations will remain exactly the same compared to last February while voters living abroad would only be able to vote via telematic means, the CNE being unable to organize voting operations in the consulate offices in time. More generally, this whole new electoral process in a context of lack of time and shortage of money will be an operational challenge for the CNE which has previously not distinguished itself by its competence and timeliness. This is the recipe for a possible debacle.

Furthermore, the schedule is leaving very little time for political organizations to hold their selection processes and constitute their lists in the legislative elections, especially since is now enforced for the first time requirements to improve gender and age representativeness (a national party must has at least 30% of its parliamentary lists with a woman as its top candidate; at least 25% of candidates for legislative elections must be under 30).

The flash (nine days) official campaign is also leaving little time for the promotion of candidates which could prompt political organizations to prioritize candidates already familiar to voters (hence why the ID is apparently pulling out from the presidential race and why the names of Andrés Arauz and Carlos Rabascall, the two members of the 2021 presidential ticket, are insistently mentioned for the RC presidential slot Correísmo having not much other names available and no time to repeat the 2021 campaign experience when it nominated a then largely unknown figure as its presidential candidate but had six months to promote it).

Finally, having the Yasuní referendum held concurrently with the general elections sounds as quite bad for democratic debate as the whole discussion on that topic and the related question of extractivism will be largely overshadow by the presidential horse-race. It may also pose problems to the RC by forcing it to take a clear position or exposing itself as hypocrite on the matter: while Correa, when president, embraced an extractivist agenda and did his best to prevent the holding of referendums on oil exploitation and mining projects, the party has to some extent moved towards more environmental-friendly positions, at least at local level, as exemplified by the support of Pabel Muñoz to the campaign to forbade mining in Quito.

[Sir John Johns]

The list of people having declared as candidates or pre-candidates in the next presidential election has increased in the latest days while three of the most relevant political forces (RC, Pachakutik and CREO) are still to announce their pick. Having learned the harsh lesson from the last Quito municipal or the 2017 presidential election (when Moreno got almost elected in the first round thanks to the 40% of the vote and 10%-led over the second most-voted candidate rule) when fragmentation between a half-dozen of candidates led to (or almost led to) its electoral defeat, the Ecuadorian right has managed to unite behind a single candidacy and… No, I’m joking, there is again the half-dozen of candidates (some clearly doomed to receive a low single-digit result) all calling for ‘unity’ but not at the price of withdrawing their own candidacies. Seriously, if all of this ends with a runoff between Correa’s candidate and Iza, they will have no right to complain.

So, this how the field is looking right now:

* Jan Topic (PSC) has designated his running-mate, so far the only candidate to have done so, and it will be Pedro Freile, previously the 2021 AMIGO presidential candidate and the 2023 PSE-SUMA candidate for mayor of Quito. Freile has been in politics since not even three years but has already been a candidate for four different political parties. Amazing.

* Yaku Pérez has been formally endorsed by Gustavo Larrea’s DSI as well as by the UP and the PSE, the three parties having joined Pérez’s unregistered Somos Agua into the so-called Minka por la Vida coalition (‘minka for the life’ with minka or minga designating collective and benevolent action in the Kichwa culture). The PSE ditched its initial pre-candidate (the only female candidate so far, btw), Elsa Guerra, just a few days after her announcement; Guerra ran for prefect of Pichincha in last February as the candidate of the PSE-SUMA alliance that also sponsored the candidacy Freile in Quito and received then a respectable 8.5%.

* The candidacy of Fernando Villavicencio has received the support of Construye (ex-Ruptura 25), the party of María Paula Romo (the main political operator of President Moreno), which is particularly ironic for a candidate pretending to ‘eradicate all the mafias in public sector’ because Romo was in 2020 at the core of a massive scandal of corruption in public hospitals. Villavicencio’s alliance will also run for candidate in the legislative elections Ana Galarza, a CREO assemblywoman removed from office in 2019 by a vote of the parliament for influence peddling and requesting bribes (‘tithes’) from her parliamentary collaborators.

* Otto Sonnenholzner, who just graduated from Harvard, has received the endorsement of SUMA, Avanza and the ID, at least the faction to which belongs Dalton Bacigalupo. Only ten days before, Bacigalupo had warned Otto and Daniel Noboa about the ID not being on sale...

https://twitter.com/fabriciovelav/status/1663705499743682561

* Daniel Noboa, the leader of the unregistered National Democratic Action (ADN, also the initial letters of Noboa’s full name: Daniel Noboa Azín – this old trick will never die), has officially received the support of Arturo Moreno’s PID and MOVER, the later being the legal successor of Alianza PAIS. Yes, that same movement which ascend to power under Correa in 2006 by defeating Álvaro Noboa, the father of Daniel.

* Speaking of what, Álvaro Noboa has, of course, announced his presidential bid through the release of a video on social networks on 29 May. Noboa has already ran for president five time (1998, 2002, 2006, 2009 and 2013) going for barely missing the election in the runoff to a miserable 3.7% in the first round. In 2021, he unsuccessfully attempted to register his candidacy.

https://twitter.com/diariocorreoec/status/1663395697016569857

Noboa’s elocution in his presidential announcement is even more painful than usual and it seems doubtful the aging (72) billionaire could actually campaigning or participating in the public debates. Alvarito doesn’t bother to indicate which party will sponsor his candidacy (his own having been deregistered several years ago) nor mention the rival candidacy of his son. The announcement video has since been deleted without any explanation.

* The Democratic Center (CD), which is owned by Jimmy Jairala, is going to sponsor the candidacy of Eduardo Maruri, a Guayaquil businessman in advertisement sector (judging by his very detailed and very dithyrambic article on the Anglo Wikipedia he is indeed very good to advertise himself) and a 2007 constituent assemblyman in for UNO (A New Option), the short-lived right-leaning party he established. Maruri has also been the president of the Barcelona Sporting Club soccer club from 2007 until his abrupt resignation in 2010, when leaving the club heavily indebted after a disastrous season where it barely avoided being relegated in second division. Maruri is pretending not to be a chimbador candidate and running ‘to win’ while talking about running the country with a ‘businessman mentality’ and getting ‘results’ thanks to ‘the best working team’.

* AMIGO may opt to run Bolívar Armijos, a former local elected official in Esmeraldas Province (president of the Calderón rural parish) as well as the former chairman of the Rural Parishes Governments National Council of Ecuador (CONAGOPAR) between 2014 and 2019. His management at head of the institution has been criticized and investigated over presumed financial irregularities. Once a hardcore support of Rafael Correa, Armijos weirdly enough announced in 2019 he would be the Correísta presidential candidate with Correa as his running-mate, a surprising proclamation considering his lack of notoriety and political experience at high level. Ultimately, Armijos only obtained a spot on the UNES parliamentary national list and failed to win a seat. He has since founded his (unregistered) party, the Rural and Productive Force, and made in 2022 a tweet to endorse the candidacy of Nicolás Lapentti for prefect of Guayas.

* Rumors about Jorge Yunda planning something with Pedro Granja, some lawyer who is looking like a bit mentally deranged, while Carlos Sagnay de la Bastida is making noise to indicate he is available to run a fourth time (and for a fourth different party because all the ones he had ran for have been subsequently de-registered) for president on the grounds of a made-up poll (15,000 respondents of wjhom 60% face-to-face, yeah totally credible) placing him third.


Meanwhile, the names of the candidates ran by the RC, Pachakutik and CREO are remaining undecided or undisclosed.

* Guillermo Lasso, who came back from the United States where he had (once more) underwent surgery, will announce his decision in the next days. But CREO is already disintegrating: Francisco Jiménez (minister for government in 2022-23 and a key political operator of Lasso who started his career as a Guayas governor in the early years of the Correa administration) has announcing his departure from the ruling party and the creation of his own political party (‘National Organized Citizen Action’, Acción) which intends to participate in some way in the upcoming elections even if it has no time to register.

* The nomination of the RC candidate will reportedly been decided between three names: Andrés Arauz (the 2021 candidate), Carlos Rabascall (the head of an advertisement company and the 2021 vice-presidential candidate) and Luisa González.

The latter, whose name is aggressively promoted by Vinicio Alvarado (an influential political adviser to Correa who also worked for Cristina Kirchner and on the 2022 successful campaign of Gustavo Petro), has been an assemblywoman from Manabí since 2021 after having hold a collection of technocratic jobs without much public exposure (national secretary for public administration under Correa for just five months in 2017; adviser for the Ecuadorian Post Office public company; consul general in Alicante, Spain; general-secretary in the Superintendency for Companies, Securities and Insurances; general-secretary of the Andean Parliament).

González has a major advantage over her competitors inside the RC: she has been a staunch and devoted supporter of Correa (or presumed so) unlike Arauz and Rabascall who have both previously attempted to distance themselves a bit from the former president (Arauz in the 2021 runoff campaign, at least according to Aquilés Álvarez; Rabascall by publicly declaring in late 2021 his intention to run for president in 2025). Loyalty is the main argument sold by Alvarado to push the candidacy of González.

However, González has also detractors inside the RC because she is little known – for what it’s worth, she’s not even has an article on the Spanish Wikipedia – (meaning resources would have to be invested to promote her among voters and that, as she haven’t faced much scrutiny until now, there is the risk of a skeleton in the closet emerging during the campaign and derailing her candidacy; a bit similar to what happened to Arauz few days before the runoff when it was revealed he was on the payroll of the government until 2020). She also made some strong stances against abortion, opposing notably a bill on legalizing abortion in case of rape on the grounds it would equate to ‘legalize the homicide of a baby’, something that would again pissed up social progressive and feminist sectors.

For his part, Arauz may also has problems because of his recent appointment by Lula to head the quixotic plan for a Latin American currency as an alternative to the US dollar; back in 2021, he was campaigning on the promise to strengthen the dollarization. Such turnaround may help reinforce the characterization of Arauz as a dishonest and deceitful politician (Andrés, no mientas otra vez was a tagline Lasso repeated several times during the 2021 face-to-face presidential debate).

At this point, the RC candidate is probably favored to win the election but the choice of a poor candidate by Correa could, like in 2021, screw things up.

* Finally, two candidates have registered for the nomination as the candidate for Pachakutik: Salvador Quishpe and Leonidas Iza. The latter has been officially proposed to run by Marlon Santi, the coordinator of Pachakutik and a strong opponent of Iza inside the indigenous movement, probably because a candidacy of Iza would boost Pachakutik candidates in the legislative elections. However, Iza has posed conditions for his nomination, notably the confirmation of Churuchumbi as the next party coordinator and the exclusion of the list of legislative candidates of all incumbent legislators he accuses of having fraternize with Lasso, in first place Guadalupe Llori and Ricardo Vanegas (the later having however already announced he will run for reelection for the alliance led by Villavicencio).

[Sir John Johns]

* Fernando Villavicencio (Construye) has picked Andrea González Nader as his running-mate. A 36-year-old environmental engineer, González Nader is an environmental activist notably involved in the protection of the Guayas tropical dry forest. The host of the environment-theme EcoVerde web-radio, she has some experience in electoral politics, firstly as the UP candidate for vice-prefect of Guayas in 2019, secondly as a candidate for National Assembly on the national list of the Honesty Alliance (PSE and Concertación) on spot #2; the list was headed by Villavicencio.

This is a bit of surprising move as it was rumored that Villavicencio, who had previously indicated his running-mate would be a woman from the Costa, would designated Liliana Febres-Cordero, the daughter of the late PSC president. Maybe an attempt to move towards the center and reach voters concerned about environmental issues as the law-and-order/pro-business niche begins to be overcrowded.

However, a quick search on González Nader’s twitter account is returning no recent results about the salient issue of Yasuní and the consulta on that topic and she seems to be mostly concerned about threats on the environment on the single Guayaquil area. Her brand of environmentalism sounds more like nimbyism than an opposition to Ecuador's current extractivism-based economic model.


* Bolívar Armijos (AMIGO) also picked his running-mate: Gerson Almeida, a pro-life evangelical pastor and homophobic anti-vaxx conspiracy nutcase, who previously ran for president in 2021 as the candidate of Edwin Moreno’s Ecuatoriano Unido and received 1.7% of the vote. He then faced a lot of criticisms for his theocratic discourse and pretty deranged views.

https://twitter.com/GersonAlmeidaEc/status/1664379864961384449

Honored with my brother in Christ, Bolívar Armijos, lawyer with experience and outreach in the parishes; he has invited me on this presidential ticket for life, for peace, solidarity, free market and secured business. For the country.

God bless Ecuador.

God, Homeland and Freedom! [national motto of Ecuador]

Arguably, Armijos-Almeida is already a strong contender for the sh**ttiest presidential ticket in this election.

[Sir John Johns]

Important developments:

https://twitter.com/PrimeraPlanaECU/status/1664675411077234721

‘Pachakutik is captured by the oligarchy’ denounced Jairo Cantincuz, president of the Conaice, who informed that in concert with the bases of the Conaie it has been agreed to withdraw the candidacy of Leonidas Iza.

The Enlarged Council of the Conaie decided unanimously to withdraw the candidacy of Leonidas Iza in the extraordinary elections.

Followers of Iza are denouncing the non-fulfillment of the conditions demanded by the CONAIE president to accept a potential nomination, in first place the handing-over of the Pachakutik coordination to Guillermo Churuchumbi and the exclusion of the pro-Lasso legislators from the selection process of legislative candidates. The CONAIE will also not supported other candidates also registered for the presidential nomination (read Salvador Quishpe).


And Lasso isn’t running:

https://twitter.com/FerminVaca/status/1664695898742444032

URGENT: Guillermo Lasso announces that he will not run in the 20 August elections, but says this will not be the ‘final point’ for his political project but ‘a new beginning’. Lasso will move forward with his usual work schedule.

Lasso calls upon ‘genuine democrats’ to not cling to power. And asks candidates to analyze whether their candidacies are necessaries. Lasso says he ‘will return with the head held high’ suggesting he doesn’t rule out 2025.

A 2025 candidacy is totally delusional and good luck for the new beginning with a dying party.

And while on his way out, Lasso is finding himself embroiled in another possible corruption scandal:

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article275955681.html

As the president of Ecuador faced threats of impeachment for alleged corruption, a tiny Miami public relations firm was given a six-figure contract to lobby journalists to publish favorable stories about the embattled leader — not in Ecuador, where his political fortunes were dire, but in British and U.S. media markets, including in Miami, interviews and public records show.

Mysteries abound over the $250,000 PR payment benefiting President Guillermo Lasso, according to a joint investigation by the Miami Herald, the Organized Crime and and Corruption Reporting Project and Ecuador’s Plan V Magazine. Where did it originate? Why embark on a Florida-based charm offensive if you are struggling to stay afloat politically in Ecuador? Was it money from the Ecuadorian public till diverted to political use, which would be improper — and which Lasso’s press secretary denies? Did a benefactor come to Lasso’s aid? Did the wealthy president, previously linked to tens of millions in South Florida real estate, pick up the tab himself?

[PSOL]

This is really RC/Correa’s race to lose

[Sir John Johns]

* And there is a last-minute change in the election regulations provoking the collapse of two of the already announced presidential tickets and messing up the ongoing constitution of the parliamentary lists. The Election National Council (CNE) has made the decision to disregard provisions of the 2020 ‘Code of Democracy’ (electoral code) originally intended to be implemented starting from the 2025 general elections. Such provisions are prescribing the introduction of mandatory gender parity on presidential tickets and a 50% quota of women as top candidates for all the lists ran by political organizations in the legislative elections. The CNE decided such changes should not applied during the 2023 extraordinary elections (which 2020 legislators could obviously not be aware of) but this has been challenged before the Electoral Dispute Tribunal (TCE) by feminist groups. And the TCE has ruled in favor of the feminist groups on 2 June and ordered the CNE to implement the gender parity rules in the extraordinary elections of this year. The CNE then announced it would not file a recourse against the TCE ruling (presumably to not further complicate the organization of the elections) and immediately proceeded to amend the electoral regulation to enable an immediate entry into force of the gender parity requirements. It also pushed back the deadline to register candidacies from 7 to 10 June.

As a consequence, the candidacies for vice-presidency of Pedro Freile (PSC) and Gerson Almeida (AMIGO) are no longer valid and Topic and Armijos now need to find a new (female) running-mate. A bad outcome for them as they could have expected benefiting from the presence of a more well-known candidate for vice-president on the ticket to boost their own presidential candidacy.


* So just a week remaining before the deadline for registering candidacies. Best moment ever for starting a coup in the ID!

https://twitter.com/PrimeraPlanaECU/status/1664797083507752960

Analía Ledesma is now at the head of the ID. The Ethics Council suspended Enrique Chávez for ‘serious electoral infringement’ because he disaffiliated from the Patriotic Society Party (PSP) only in 2022 and according to the party’s statuses he couldn’t be a party leader within four years.

Chávez has been elected as the party’s acting president in April 2022 during an extraordinary congress that removed the then-president, Guillermo Herrera. The latter challenged the legality of the election of Chávez but the CNE ruled in favor of Chávez and recognized him as the head of the self-described social-democratic party.

The official Twitter account of the ID has however released a statement assuring the only legal (interim) president of the party is and remains Chávez and pretending that neither Ledesma nor the members of the ‘Ethics Council’ are actually affiliated with the ID and accusing them of usurping party duties to take control of the ID and influence the candidates nomination process. In the statement, support for the presidential candidacy of Otto Sonnenholzner is also reasserted.

In 2021, the five most-voted political organizations were CREO, the RC, the PSC, the ID and Pachakutik. At the moment, two (the RC and the PSC) are de facto ran from abroad by insufferable autocratic assholes (Correa who is living in Belgium since 2017, even before judicial processes had been started against him; Jaime Nebot who has relocated in the United States and, in spite of having officially retired from politics, is still pulling the strings in the PSC), two (the ID and Pachakutik) are plagued by insurmountable internal disputes and legal challenges over their legitimate leadership and, finally, the last one (CREO) has decided to commit political suicide.

The term of 'non-party system' I have seen used to describe Peru's political environment can probably be applied to Ecuador I think.


* Finally, as if the whole thing wasn’t already enough ridiculous, a new video from Álvaro Noboa has been published on his Facebook account. In this one, the banana magnate painfully delivers a call to Ecuadorians to join his fight ‘for changing, improving and modernizing’ the country without clarifying whether he is running for president or not. Neither is mentioned the presidential bid of his own son.

[PSOL]

What are the Hoxhaists doing?

[Sir John Johns]

The ‘Hoxhaists’ are the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador (PCMLE), an unregistered party (so can’t directly participate into the elections) which has however its electoral front, the Popular Unity (Unidad Popular, UP). The UP has joined the Minka por la Vida alliance supporting the candidacy of Yaku Pérez, an alliance also made up by the Ecuadorian Socialist Party (PSE), Democracia Sí as well as Pérez’s unregistered Somos Aguas.

On its website, the PCMLE is informing us of the UP’s decision with a statement titled ‘the revolutionary left supports Yaku Pérez’.

The unity in these times is vitally important to strengthen the popular movement, the presentation of a proposal showing the class independence of the left enables the peoples of Ecuador to have an option distinct from the right and Correísmo. The political parties and organizations of the left are working to develop a large political and social front with the aims to confront neoliberalism and Correísmo in the extraordinary elections that will take place on August 20, 2023.

In this context, Popular Unity has made public its support to the candidacy of Yaku Pérez to the presidency of the Republic of Ecuador; this support is the result of the internal democracy that this organization undertook during its National Council, summoned on 24 May 2023 and in which more than 600 delegates from the various provinces of the country participated.

As for other Ecuadorian political parties, the ideology claimed by the PCMLE/UP should not be taken at face value. The ‘Hoxhaist’ party and its electoral front is mostly a vehicle to defend the interests of the main teachers organization (UNE) as well as various labor and student unions. Such unions have a rather limited following (the indigenous movement is now the driving force of social protest). Worth remembering that social and economic conditions in Ecuador (lack of major industries; prominence of informal employment, unemployment and underemployment; weak civil service; legislation unfavorable to unionization) have not provided a fertile ground for the development of a relevant labor movement in Ecuador.

The PCMLE, the UP (and its MPD forerunner) have all been hostile to the Correa administration for a variety of reasons but notably a reform of the public education sector opposed by the UNE, the criminalization of social protest and the attempt from Correa to dissolve the UNE for bogus administration reasons combined with his support to the creation of state-sponsored rival unions (United Confederation of Labor – CUT; Red de Maestros; those are ironically now the unions the most favorable to the Lasso government). Hostility to Correa from the ‘Hoxhaists’ went as far to what was an endorsement of Lasso in the 2017 runoff and a call to protest against a manipulation of the result by the government; the PCMLE then issued an editorial titled ‘A rout of Correísmo will be a political victory for the people’. I’m not sure such decision would have received the ‘Enver Hoxha seal of approval’.

The UP is now following the ‘neither Correa nor Lasso’ strategy already used in 2021 and advocated by Yaku Pérez and approved in the runoff by the CONAIE (‘ideological null vote’), in contrast with Iza’s position to overcome the pro-Correa/anti-Correa cleavage.

[Sir John Johns]

* Rumors than CREO will field as its presidential candidate Esteban Bernal, the current minister for social and economic inclusion and party leader since last May. Bernal has previously served as an assemblyman in 2017-19 and unsuccessfully ran for prefect of Azuay in 2019 (placing then third with 18.1% of the votes).

* The Patriotic Society Party (PSP) has declined running a candidate in the presidential election. Its leader, former president Lucio Gutiérrez (received 1.8% of the votes in the 2021 presidential election) has announced it will instead support the candidacy of Jan Topic. A logical choice considering the traditional penal populism championed by the PSP and its long-time advocacy of heavy hand methods to solve criminality and corruption problems.

* The first presidential ticket has been officially registered with the CNE. Daniel Noboa will be the candidate of the ‘ADN 2023’ alliance made up by the PID and the MOVER with Verónica Abad as his running-mate. A rather obscure political figure, Abad has been the candidate of AMIGO for mayor of Cuenca at the beginning of the year, placing seventh with 5.3% of the votes. During the campaign, she displayed some strong anti-abortion and homophobic stances, making notably criticisms against ‘gender ideology’. As she describes herself in her Twitter account biography as a ‘fusionist politician/coach entrepreneur’, retweet Thatcher’s quotes and is certainly the ‘Veronica Abad of Cuenca’ who published in 2015 an opinion piece criticizing Correa on the website founded by Nicolás Márquez (an Argentinian alt-right ideologue and supporter of Gómez Centurión), I think we can have a rather clear idea about where she is standing politically.

According to La Posta, the nomination of Abad could however be challenged on the grounds she resigned from the Azuay provincial direction of AMIGO after having registered her candidacy with the PID-MOVER alliance. Her former party, which received her formal resignation only yesterday, is contemplating filing a recourse before the electoral authorities.

[Sir John Johns]

RIP Creating Opportunities Movement (2011-2023)

Esteban Bernal has just announced CREO will not run candidates this year, neither in the presidential nor the legislative elections. He also declared that the party will not campaign for a candidate and that CREO members can vote for whichever candidate they want, only mentioning the ‘red lines’ that are Correísmo and ‘parties which didn’t respected the Constitution and the laws like the PSC’. He has also attacked Esteban Torres, claiming he doesn’t believe the former PSC parliamentary leader has respected the Constitution, the laws, the rules governing the country and political ethic.

Then he went on his phone and retweet these unbelievable proclamations (are they seriously believing this bullsh!t???):

https://twitter.com/matiasabadm/status/1666125777019056129

GIVING IN IS NOT LOSING. The decision of the movement is in full CONSISTENCY with the announcement of the President.

The true call to UNITY has to transcend the words and translate into action, like this one, in favor of democracy and freedom.

Let it be a precedent.

https://twitter.com/Ariannaburgosca/status/1666123565542912000

We will be back in 2025! With more force! For now our work continues.

[S019]

So, what exactly is the path forward for the Ecuadorian right?

[Sir John Johns]

Hervas has finally found time for a presidential bid, but not for the ID, instead it will be for RETO. What a joke.

https://twitter.com/eluniversocom/status/1666527068404826112

The businessman Xavier Hervas will be a presidential candidate for the Total Renovation Movement (RETO), list 33.

For his part, Eduardo Maruri has decided to give up and announced he is withdrawing his hopeless and useless candidacy and endorsing Otto Sonnenholzner. The CD has clarified the decision of Maruri is personal and not reflects the position of the movement which will announce later what will be its role in the presidential election.



https://twitter.com/FerminVaca/status/1666258537826140161

In a statement, the PSC reserves the right to nominate the candidate for the vice presidency of the Republic in its alliance with Jan Topic, in what appears a dissent with the nomination, announced by the campaign of Topic, of Diana Jácome.

Topic has designated Diana Jácome, a lawyer and TV journalist from Quito, as his running-mate. The problem is that Jacóme is accused of having been (still being?) close to Correísmo, an accusation ‘supported’ by an old 2017 tweet in which she expressed ‘an eternal affection’ for Correa for ‘everything he has done for [the] country’ as well as photographs published on social networks on which she can be seen wearing the Alianza PAIS light green shirt or standing next to Mauro Andino, a pro-Correa lawyer and public figure.

This is angering the PSC leadership which is wanting a vice president candidate sharing ‘a social market economy philosophy’ and ‘totally detached from both socialism of any century and from a right alien to social justice and conscience’ (yes, the last part is to tackle CREO).

[Sir John Johns]

So, what exactly is the path forward for the Ecuadorian right?

What could be considered as the Ecuadorian Right (or rather the Ecuadorian Rights because rightist/conservative/oligarchic parties have never has formed an organic and united political bloc and their respective voting base is far from overlapping, being divided by a strong regional cleavage) is at the moment split into four of five presidential candidacies (Topic, Villavicencio, Sonnenholzner, Hervas and Daniel Noboa), each with a chance (even the slightest one) of coming on top of the pack and facing the RC candidate (the most-voted first round candidate in all likeliness at this point) in the runoff (providing Yaku Pérez, who is on a different political segment doesn’t surpass them all). The self-termination of CREO has reduced the fragmentation of the right-leaning vote and increased the chances for a right-wing candidate to go to the runoff, but there is still too much candidates in the race vying for that part of the electorate, bringing the risk the traditional right is eliminated in the first round (something that already happened in 1988, 2002 and arguably 2006; there has been no runoff in 2009 and 2013 when Correa was easily reelected).

It is really hard at the moment to assess which candidate is the strongest one (especially as polls are largely unreliable) and the dynamics of the campaign will play certainly a major role to determine which one will place ahead, but it is possible that none manage to take the lead and that the right-leaning vote ends up evenly split between three or four candidacies. Furthermore, the considerable distrust and even hatred among the various factions of the Ecuadorian right (in particular, the PSC which is at odds with Villavicencio and CREO, the later, while not running, is still keeping an influence, notably thanks to its control over the central government financial and material resources) is making a convergence behind a single first round candidacy unlikely; the insurmountable divisions inside the Right may led to bad transfers and ultimately prove fatal for the right-wing candidate who would have made the runoff.

More broadly, the general political and economic environment and the disastrous record of the Lasso administration (first right-wing president elected since 1998) isn’t very favorable for classic right-wing candidates. Voters will not be particularly enthused by promises of tax cuts for the wealthy, diminishing role of the state, austerity, fiscal balance and labor deregulation when the country is hit hard by poverty and malnutrition, when public services (in particular health sector) is collapsing because of cuts and lay-offs in civil service and when the central government is struggling to help victims of natural disasters (like for the Alausí landslide in last March or the dramatic floods that have devastated Esmeraldas province this week).

The only issue, a right-winger could be favored may be the rising criminality and related gang violence but, firstly, the main champion of law-and-order (Topic) has structural weaknesses (he compares himself with Bukele, but unlike Topic Bukele had already a long political experience when he was elected president of El Salvador), secondly the Lasso administration, the Guayaquil PSC and Freile in Quito all campaigned heavily on security matters on last February, but this didn’t save them from electoral rout (probably because their own record on the matter wasn’t particularly shining).

And, if somehow, Sonnenholzner, Topic or Villavicencio manage to go to the runoff and beat Correa’s candidate to become the next president, there is great chance such hypothetical victory ends up as a pyrrhic victory. Indeed, whoever enters Carondelet Palace in next November will inherit a particularly bad situation with a lot of worrying issues (criminality, emigration, decay of the state, social discontent, environmental and climatic crisis - El Niño is predicted to return in the next months, with potential disastrous human and economical consequences) and a deteriorated budgetary situation and in uncertain times on economic and international fronts (Ecuador is currently scoring the third highest country risk in Latin America), all of this with not even eighteen months before returning to the polls for general elections. Finally, unless he is Correa’s candidate (and even Correa’s candidate isn’t ensured to enjoy such thing) the next president has great chances of not having a working majority in the legislature and to face a hostile CPCCS. In these conditions, he will have to constantly negotiate to get things done.

So, the better for the Right may be to ‘skip’ this presidential election, to let the new president crash and prepare for 2025. The problem is that the Ecuadorian Right is at the moment very disorganized in term of political organization (the PSC is the only relevant party of the bunch; SUMA, Avanza, Construye, RETO, PID and MOVER are either minor parties either organizations only existing on paper) and is lacking a strong network of local elected officials, in particular in the major cities (Guayaquil, Quito, Cuenca). Not the best condition for a strong comeback.

[MRCVzla]

Sir John could detail more later, but RC announced what the controversial former VP Jorge Glas was their presidential (pre)candidate with Luisa González as their running-mate. Glas was just reinstalled of his political rights after a court sentence from a judge of Yaguachi (but the National Justice Court president says that judge commited "prevaricato"). Glas relinquished anyway from the candidature, now Gónzalez will be the main candidate and Andrés Arauz (2021 candidate/runner-up) will be her new running-mate.

Otto Sonnelholzner accepted his pre-candidature from the "Actuemos" alliance of Avanza and SUMA, with the support of ID. The third alliance to be confirmed after the ones who support Daniel Noboa (ADN: PID-MOVER) and Yaku Pérez ("Claro que se Puede": UP-PSE-MDSí). Jairala' CD announced his support to Jan Topic, Kiwicha doctor Luz Marina Vega will be Hervas' running mate.

[Sir John Johns]

Sir John could detail more later, but RC announced what the controversial former VP Jorge Glas was their presidential (pre)candidate with Luisa González as their running-mate. Glas was just reinstalled of his political rights after a court sentence from a judge of Yaguachi (but the National Justice Court president says that judge commited "prevaricato"). Glas relinquished anyway from the candidature, now Gónzalez will be the main candidate and Andrés Arauz (2021 candidate/runner-up) will be her new running-mate.

It is unclear to me what has been the RC plan with the Glas candidacy, whether it has just been a media stunt or if it seriously considered running Glas as a candidate before renouncing in the face of the inevitable legal challenges.

The chronology has been the following one:

- on early June, the RC announced having selected its presidential ticket but didn’t disclose the identity of the candidates.

- on 7 June, the Constitutional Court ruled that judges producing suspicious sentences in requests of habeas corpus, injunctions and actions for protection of the rights of defendants and convicts could face legal proceedings for ‘prevaricato’ (misapplication of the law).

In its ruling (related to an injunction issued against the Central Bank), the Court established there have been abuses of protective measures leading to sentences openly contrary to the constitution. Indeed, there has been a sharp increase of grants of protective measures by local judges. This has led to the releases from jail of drug traffickers (including an Albanian mobster fugitive from Albanian, Italian and Belgian justices and a Lithuanian drug trafficker subject to an Interpol red notice) as well as politicians sentenced for corruption (in first place Jorge Glas himself)

Protective measures have also been used to interfere in political processes (like the judicial attempts of Guadalupe Llori to prevent her removal from the presidency of the National Assembly).

- on 9 June, a judge of Yaguachi (Guayas) issued a temporary injunction restoring the political rights the former vice president has lost when sentenced for corruption and sent a notification to the CNE. The sentence is going against the Constitution and the Democracy Code which are stating that condemnatory sentences in crimes against public administration entails the loss of political rights for life; the loss of political rights for persons sentenced in corruption cases has been furthermore approved in the 2018 mega-referendum with 73.7% of ‘yes’.

The same judge has previously released from jail ‘alias Ariel’, one of the leaders of the Los Lobos drug gang and  unsuccessfully attempted last month to prevent the inauguration of the elected mayor of Portoviejo on the grounds he didn’t attended the mandatory televised debate during the campaign (for the good reason he was recovering from an assassination attempt by drug gang members…)

- the same day, RC announced the presidential ticket will be headed  by a male candidate.

- again on 9 June, the president of the National Court of Justice, Iván Saquicela, tweeted about the importance of not letting prevaricato in the Ecuadorian justice going unpunished, without explicitly mentioning the Yaguachi judge.

Yet, Rafael Correa quickly replied to Saquicela tweet by calling him a ‘piece of scoundrel’ and insinuating he has ascended to the head of the National Court in reward for his involvement in the sentencing of the former president in the Sobornos 2012-2016 case. The former president also started a poll on Twitter to ask his followers whether Glas should be the 2023 RC presidential candidate. Out of 50,000 voters, Glas won with 53.1% with Correa indicating that ‘most of those who voted ‘no’ did it to safeguard Jorge’.

- the following day, in the RC convention held in Portoviejo, the national president of the party, Marcela Aguiñaga, announced the political bureau has unanimously designated Glas as its presidential candidate. Glas then made a discourse in which he notably attacked Lenín Moreno and Lasso but, after about only ten minutes, he announced the withdrawal of his candidacy, arguing of the high risk of a rejection of his candidacy. Subsequently, the political bureau was invited to vote on the new González-Arauz presidential ticket and approved it.



Reactions about the Portoviejo convention and the short-lived candidacy of Glas are contrasted.

Some observers have described it a ‘master move’ as it enabled to monopolize media space while underlining the facts that González is the only female candidate and that only the RC has organized a mass event to announce their presidential candidates.

Others are pointing out the whole thing has been mostly a self-congratulatory celebration of Correa with the RC local authorities elected on last February (Pabel Muñoz, Paola Pabón and Aquiles Álvarez) not having been featured. The demotion of Arauz, the representative of the ‘left’ part of the RC, to the vice presidential spot to make room for a Correa super-loyalist and largely unknown assemblywoman has also been noticed as well as the sidelining of Rabascall, the 2021 vice-presidential candidate and a well-known face of the ‘right’ wing of the RC.

Feminists are also furious about the nomination of González, who, as an assemblywoman staunchly opposed legislation to legalize abortion in case of rape and displayed on this occasion the light blue scarf (pañuelo celeste) introduced by the Argentinian pro-life movement and generally associated with right-wing if not very right-wing groups.
      
https://twitter.com/mariasolborja/status/1667602071766327298

Like Arauz in 2021, González can’t claim a personal measure on her own in spite of her long participation in the bureaucracy of the Correa administration and run the risk of being defined for her sole social conservative stance and closeness to the former president. Additionally, she is hailing from Manabí province, already the stronghold of Correísmo, and is of not much use to win back voters in the highlands.

With the designation of González (because nobody believes the fiction she has been democratically selected by the party’s base and political bureau), Correa is making clear he has not changed and is unrepentant about his errors during his government and the 2021 campaign and has indicated privileging loyalty over popularity in the selection of the candidate.

In a recent interview to El País (partly behind paywall), the former president has exposed one could be the main plank of the next RC government: declaring the 2018 referendum results invalid, in particular the approval of the amendment restoring term limits. As put by Correa: ‘We do not rule out the possibility to summon a constituent assembly, not to implement a new constitution, even if there will be reforms, but above all to declare that 2018 referendum invalid and install new state authorities’ (taking over the state institutions is also include in the package).

The summoning of a constituent assembly requires a two-third vote in the National Assembly; normally, a simple referendum to reverse the 2018 amendments could be summoned by the president but I guess the chances of victory may be a little too uncertain.
      
In that same interview, Correa is also warning the attorney general, Diana Salazar, she will face justice; the new CPCCS has indeed already lay the grounds for her removal on the grounds she had plagiarized her university thesis. Presumably, the point is to nullify the sentencing of Correa in the Sobornos 2012-2016 case, then remove the term limits and enable the former president to run for a fourth term in office in 2025.


In another news related to the RC, Jefferson Pérez’s local Renace is endorsing the González-Arauz ticket. Pérez has previously been a staunch critic of Correa but reportedly has obtained a spot on the RC list in election for Azuay provincial assemblymen for one of his allies.

[Sir John Johns]

Otto Sonnelholzner accepted his pre-candidature from the "Actuemos" alliance of Avanza and SUMA, with the support of ID. The third alliance to be confirmed after the ones who support Daniel Noboa (ADN: PID-MOVER) and Yaku Pérez ("Claro que se Puede": UP-PSE-MDSí). Jairala' CD announced his support to Jan Topic, Kiwicha doctor Luz Marina Vega will be Hervas' running mate.

Further details on this:

* Otto Sonnenholzner has picked Érika Paredes as his running-mate. Like Sonnenholzner, Paredes has recently graduated from Harvard College. Previously she has worked in various UN agencies and has been a coordinator for international affairs in the presidency of Ecuador between 2013 and 2016, so under Correa (something that isn't pleasing right-wingers).

      
* Yaku Pérez has also unveiled the candidate for vice-president of his Claro que se puede alliance: Nory Pinela, an obscure vice-dean of the private Ecotec University located in the affluent Samborondón canton. Not many more information on her. A quick glance on her largely inactive Twitter account is only showing uncontroversial messages and retweets of Pope Francis. Doesn’t sound like a left-wing profile.


* The alliance supporting Jan Topic will be named ‘Juntos Triunfaremos’ (JT: same initials than the candidate). Also Jimmy Jairala is confirming he is the most opportunist politician in Ecuador if not in the whole Latin America.

      
* Luz Marina Vega is additionally the wife of Auki Tituaña, a veteran indigenous politician (mayor of Cotacachi between 1996 and 2009 for Pachakutik and between 2019 and 2023 for Concertación; in the meantime, he had been announced as the running-mate of Guillermo Lasso for the 2013 presidential election but his nomination was successfully challenged by Pachakutik) as well as the sister of Nina Pacari, a renown indigenous activist who briefly served as the first indigenous foreign minister in 2003.

She *may* bring some indigenous voters, an electorate in which Hervas largely under-performed in 2021.


* It seems Pachakutik like the ID will not have its own candidate in the presidential election. The indigenous party is reportedly negotiating the endorsement of either Yaku Pérez either Xavier Hervas.

In any case, the CONAIE has announced it will not support nor campaign for any candidate in the first round, a decision supported by both Iza and the aforementioned Nina Pacari (an opponent to Iza in the indigenous confederation).

The CONAIE will also held a march on next 13 June, jointly with the National Anti-Mining Front, to defend ‘life, water, nature and territories’ and to support the ‘yes’ in the consulta on prohibiting oil extraction in Yasuní as well as in the planned Quito local consulta to prohibit mining activities in the Choco (it could be held on the same day than the extraordinary elections and Yasuní consulta).

In the message announcing the march, Iza criticized Yaku Pérez for being ‘inconsistent’ on environmental issues as the indigenous candidate and rival of Iza in the indigenous movement has moderated his anti-mining stances.

[FredLindq]

ID is supporting Sonnenholzer and Pacahkutik Yaku.
Yaku vs Correristas in a second round were Yaku wins easily. Or could Sonnenholzer surprise?!

[Sir John Johns]

The five certified presidential tickets at the moment are the following ones:

* Jan Topić – Diana Jácome (Por un país sin miedo: PSC/PSP/CD)
* Yaku Pérez – Nory Pinela (Claro que se puede: UP/PSE/DSI)
* Daniel Noboa – Verónica Abad (Alianza Democrática Nacional, ADN: PID/MOVER)
* Otto Sonnenholzner – Érika Paredes (Actuemos: Avanza/SUMA)
* Bolívar Armijos – Linda Romero (AMIGO)

I realize I forgot to mention Linda Romero. Not that it is particularly important or relevant because:

1/ vice-presidential picks in Ecuador are very different from those in the United States, hence why it more usually ends with the vice-presidential slot being allocated to some obscure figure with not much political experience if not at all

2/anyway, Armijos is by far the least likely of the bunch to be elected president.

So Linda Romero is a quite obscure television presenter and producer as well as a communication adviser who has established in 2020 a ‘Mujeres Reales’ women empowerment foundation. In an article promoting said foundation, Romero is also described as a ‘social communicator and transitional coach’ who founded ‘Mujeres Reales’ in order to address ‘the necessity of circles of support and training spaces as tools of healthful self-esteem and integral well-being for the family’.
Aside of this, I haven’t found much about the concrete work accomplished by ‘Mujeres Reales’ apart it involves ‘coaching’ and it organizes public events with the financial support of local authorities (notably the reelected mayor of Manta).

The certification of two presidential tickets have been temporarily rejected by the CNE awaiting for the correction of some minor irregularities in the paperwork:

* Luisa González – Andrés Arauz (RC)  > they haven’t provided the mandatory ‘plan of government’ defining the ticket’s policies and political roadmap in case of election.

* Fernando Villavicencio – Andrea González (Construye) > some minor error in the ‘plan of government’ and a problem with a signature of González.

The two tickets should nevertheless face no problems getting registered once they had provided corrections to the missing or inaccurate documentation. Whether it is sheer incompetence or an intended way for the tickets to replay again their respective political gimmick (‘we are politically persecuted’ ‘lawfare’ for the RC; ‘the CNE is creating trouble for the only honest candidate for minor administrative details while Registering without problem the candidacies of people accused of corruption’ for Villavicencio) is up to you.


The registration of the following ticket remains in limbo awaiting clarification:

* Xavier Hervas - Luz Vega Cornejo (RETO) have been blocked after the RC has filed a challenge against Hervas, arguing he is owning assets in tax heavens and hence constitutionally prohibited to run for public office. Hervas must provide documents to defend himself from the accusations before the CNE which will thereafter decide whether the RETO presidential candidate can run or not. Back in 2022, Hervas has been publicly accused of tax evasion by President Lasso who then requested an investigation of the tax administration on the assets of the former ID presidential candidate (which apparently went nowhere).


Also challenged by the RC is the candidacy of Patricio Carrillo, a former interior minister under Lasso, who is the top candidate on the Construye national list for assemblyman. Carrillo has been censored by the National Assembly in last February over the repression of the June 2022 indigenous paro, his (mis)management of the jail crisis and the María Bélen Bernal femicide case (a police instructor who murdered his wife in a school police before being able to flee the country).

Similarly disputed is the candidacy of Virgilio Saquicela, the last president of the outgoing National Assembly, who is running for a seat of Cañar assemblyman as a candidate of the PSE (Saquicela has previously been a candidate for Pachakutik, CREO and DSI and was campaigning for the RC in the latest locals). The challenge against Saquicela has been filed by… the PSE national leadership. Clearly, after the Héctor Vanegas fiasco of last year, the PSE is not missing any occasion to demonstrate how much of a joke it is.

https://twitter.com/radio_pichincha/status/1668345903810490369

Can’t stop laughing at the sight of such an arch-opportunist like Saquicela in the middle of these Che Guevara posters.

ID is supporting Sonnenholzer and Pacahkutik Yaku.

Actually, neither Pachakutik nor ID are registered as sponsors of a presidential candidate: the names and the logos of said parties will not appear on the presidential ballot. Similarly, they will not run a national list in the legislative elections (but still competing for seats in various provinces). This is of course the result of the internal disputes.

Pachakutik (still under the leadership of Marlon Santi) attempted at last minute to register as a sponsor of Yaku Pérez but this has been refused by the CNE. As mentioned, there are disagreements inside the indigenous movement about which candidate endorsing: the CONAIE will not campaigning for anybody in the first round, Santi is rooting for Pérez while the head of the
Chimborazo’s Pachakutik provincial branch is officially supporting Hervas. Other local sections are probably similarly not obeying to the national instructions.

Concerning the ID, the situation is a complete mess as it is unclear who is in charge of the party leadership. While Dalton Bacigalupo and Enrique Chávez (the recently removed ID national president) are openly campaigning for Sonnenholzner and so are people from the ‘coupist’ faction (Marlon Cadena, ex-legislator for Pichincha, who retweeted Erika Paredes), others like Johanna Moreira (ex-legislator for El Oro and a pro-choice advocate who has strongly criticized Luisa González in these last days) seems inclined to support Pérez. Xavier Santos, an ex-legislator from Manabí who has been expelled from the ID last year, is for his part campaigning for Daniel Noboa and is attempting to regain his seat as an ADN candidate.

The big question is how much the Pachakutik and ID national leaderships matter and how much support they actually have among local party cadres and among voters at large. I’m afraid the answer is ‘not much’.

Because, and sorry for repeating myself, but the clear conclusion you can draw from the registration process is that Ecuadorian political organizations are incredibly weak and debilitated.

Firstly, when in 2021 there were 16 presidential candidates, this year there are only eight (a 50% decrease!), a decrease explained by the fact that most political organizations haven’t a candidate of their own to run in a presidential election. Case in point, Luisa González is the only candidate to be the member of the party (or one of the parties in case of alliance) that is sponsoring her candidacy. All others are either independent either members of unregistered parties.

Two 2021 candidates (Pérez and Hervas) are running this year for another party while two other 2023 presidential candidates (Noboa and Villavicencio) have been elected legislators in 2021 for a different party than the one(s) currently sponsoring their presidential candidacies (Noboa was elected in 2021 for the now defunct Ecuatoriano Unido and Villavicencio for the ‘Honesty Alliance’ made up by the PSE and the now defunct Concertación). Not to mention that two 2021 presidential candidates (Freile and Almeida) attempted to run for vice-presidents this year for a party different than the one which sponsored their candidacies two years ago. And you have this aberrant fact: three of the five most-voted political forces in 2021 (CREO, Pachakutik, ID) have no presidential candidate nor national list for assemblymen this year while a fourth one (PSC) has bet everything on a literal mercenary with zero political experience to reverse its downward electoral fortunes.

Yaku vs Correristas in a second round were Yaku wins easily. Or could Sonnenholzer surprise?!

It is too early to have indications on who will go to the runoff (except that Luisa González has by far the strongest probabilities to qualify, by virtue of being the candidate of the largest and less disorganized political force) bar less who will be the next president. It is important to remember this is not 2021 and that priorities of the voters have changed (security has become an important one; Correísmo/anti-Correísmo cleavage has faded; the Ecuadorian right has now a record in office and it isn’t brilliant). Also Ecuador has always experienced a very high electoral volatility, so a strong result in 2021 is not at all the guarantee of a strong result in 2023.

[FredLindq]

Opinion poll

Luisa González (RC) 25,9%
Yaku Pérez (UP - PSE - DSÍ) 10,3%
Otto Sonnenholzner (Avanza - SUMA) 11,2%
Fernando Villavicencio (MC25) 8,0%
Xavier Hervas (RETO) 6,2%
Jan Topic (PSC - PSP - CD) 2,6% Ouch!!
Daniel Noboa (PID - MOVER) 3,8%
Bolívar Armijos (AMIGO) 0,4%
Nulo 13,2%
Blanco 18,4%

So Corrieristas vs Yaku or Sonnenholzner. Or could Villabicencio surprise us?!

How right wing is Sonnenholzner by the way?

[MaxQue]

Opinion poll

Luisa González (RC) 25,9%
Yaku Pérez (UP - PSE - DSÍ) 10,3%
Otto Sonnenholzner (Avanza - SUMA) 11,2%
Fernando Villavicencio (MC25) 8,0%
Xavier Hervas (RETO) 6,2%
Jan Topic (PSC - PSP - CD) 2,6% Ouch!!
Daniel Noboa (PID - MOVER) 3,8%
Bolívar Armijos (AMIGO) 0,4%
Nulo 13,2%
Blanco 18,4%

So Corrieristas vs Yaku or Sonnenholzner. Or could Villabicencio surprise us?!

How right wing is Sonnenholzner by the way?

He has links to Spain's Vox.

[Sadader]

Polls from this week and last week seem mixed, though are usually unreliable

Comunicaliza had Gonzalez at 25.9%, Sonnenholzner with 11.2% and Yaku Perez with 10.3%

Numma (don't know it) had Gonzalez at 6% (guessing fieldwork was pre-announcement), Sonnenholzner with 17%, and Yaku Perez with 14%


No idea how these runoffs would stack up. Extremely rough guess for chances of each permutation;

70% Gonzalez-Perez
20% Gonzalez-Sonnenholzner
10% Perez-Sonnenholzner; Sonnenholzner advantage?