Guillermo Lasso suffered in person this past Monday the political and social tension that has invaded Ecuador. The president went to Alausí, an Andean municipality affected by a landslide that swallowed 70 people, including 60 missing persons who are still being searched for by the authorities.
Groups of angry citizens gathered in front of the building where the president was meeting with local leaders, they even wanted to access the presidential vehicle, which forced the action of the police. The avalanche was on this occasion of insults.
The incident reveals the high tension when the conservative president faces a decision by the Constitutional Court that could lead to his dismissal when he has only been in charge of the country for two years. The judges must rule on whether to give free rein to the National Assembly to carry out the political trial that puts it between a rock and a hard place, since the opposition is the majority in the Chamber.
The momentous decision of the judges will be known in the next few hours, but the preview of Monday, when a proposal to bury the impeachment trial against Lasso was voted against, suggests a majority favorable to the opponents.
Once in Parliament, it would be enough for 92 MPs to join his censure, something possible since alongside the citizen revolution bench, commanded from abroad by former President Rafael Correa, are the Social Christians, old allies of Lasso, the radicals of the Pachakutik indigenous party and the dissidents of the Democratic Left.
However, among such atypical opposition (left-wing populists and right-wing populists) differences have also arisen, accusing each other of seeking behind-the-scenes pacts with the ruling party.
“The obvious political opposition only wants to destabilize democracy. It is a very blind opposition that does not want to respect the four-year electoral periods. They try to bend the laws through a parliamentary coup,” Lasso denounced in front of his peers in the region during the Ibero-American Summit in Santo Domingo.
The political trial that has him on the ropes arose from a journalistic investigation by the electronic newspaper La Posta, which revealed a corruption plot in state spheres with the prominence of a brother-in-law of the president. The scandal broke out at the worst possible moment for Lasso, since Ecuador is suffering an unprecedented wave of violence, caused by drug trafficking. Just in the last few hours, two police officers were assassinated, one of them belonging to the Anti-Narcotics Brigade.
If the Constitutional Court opens the trial window and it obtains the necessary votes in the Assembly, Lasso will only have one card left to play: cross death. It is a constitutional tool that allows him to dissolve Parliament and call elections within several months, during which he would govern through decrees.
From the opposition, voices have already been raised against the death cross, which for different jurists and constitutionalists has limits that are difficult to resolve.
“Ecuador has no future as long as Correa and his family continue to boycott any management that is not their own, any vision of the country and the region that does not coincide with theirs,” warned María Paula Romo, head of government during the term of President Lenín. Dark-haired and dissident from the ranks of the citizen revolution.
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