The radical indigenous leader Leónidas Iza is already in the pre-campaign. The president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie) has accepted the candidacy for the presidential elections on August 20 “at the request of the grassroots structures of our organization.”
“There is no third way, there is only one path, the path of the popular sectors,” Iza said in his first message to his great internal rival, Yaku Pérez, standard bearer of the indigenous movement in the 2021 elections and who is now once again of the contest at the head of Unidad Popular, Democracia Sí and Somos Agua.
At the moment there are eight pre-candidates, in the absence of President Guillermo Lasso and former President Rafael Correa defoliating the electoral daisy, the first taking a step forward or not and the second opting for one of the leaders of the Citizen Revolution.
In the first poll carried out by Click Report, collected by the newspaper El Universo, Yaku Pérez appears with 25% support, compared to 15% for Iza. Pérez became the great surprise of the last elections: he only lacked 30,000 votes to overcome Lasso and go to the second round.
At the head of the survey, with more than 32% of voting intentions, “correísmo” remains.
74% of those surveyed expressed their agreement with the dissolution of the National Assembly ordered by the president. Iza threatened for days, without success, to summon the indigenous people to the capital to show their repudiation of the “cross death” decreed by the president.
The internal war suffered by the Pachakutik indigenous party has been transferred in this way to the presidential candidacies. Already in Parliament itself, before it was dissolved, a part of the indigenous deputies followed the orders of Iza in his pact with Correa to dismiss Lasso, while another had decided not to support the impeachment trial against the conservative president.
Within the party the battle remains, after internal voting marked by controversy and violence. In order to confirm himself as Pachakutik’s presidential standard-bearer, Iza demands that the former general coordinator, Marlon Santi, recognize Guillermo Churuchumbi as the head of the party.
The waters go down like this from riots in the indigenous movement, the same one that Iza led in 2019 and 2022 during the two takeovers of Quito that made him famous. Since then, the main protagonist of the National Strike has made his presidential aspirations very clear.
This 41-year-old environmental engineer is a Kichwa leader from the Andean Cotopaxi, the son of another indigenous leader who participated in the Inti Raymi uprising. He has declared himself a fervent defender of Indo-American communism, to which he has incorporated Mariateguismo, a thought born in neighboring Peru, whose followers included Abimael Guzmán, leader of the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso.
“The candidate Iza has a hard roof. His extremism frightens the coastal vote and the urban middle classes. What he did with Quito (during the takeovers) is not forgiven by the people in the capital,” political analyst Martín Pallares told THE WORLD.
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