The serious crisis in Ecuador has been transferred tonight (early morning in Spain) to the National Assembly with the installation of the parliamentary session that will decide on the removal of President Guillermo Lasso. The initiative is the work of the group of congressmen who are followers of former President Rafael Correa, who from Belgium has pulled the strings in search of some votes that he does not have right now: they need 2/3 of the Chamber, at least 92 of the 135 present, when At the moment it has between 70 and 75 supports.
After 13 days of National Strike and despite the day of truce that the country is experiencing today, the situation is such that the session is being held virtually, given the impossibility for all legislators to travel from their provinces and even to access the Assembly, located at ground zero of the protests.
Lasso exercised his right to defense through his legal secretary, Fabián Pozo. In the presidential brief, the constitutionality of applying article 30.2 in the current political and social situation is questioned, since the president does not consider that the double situation of social commotion and serious political crisis is being experienced after the events of the last few hours, even with the repeal of the state of emergency carried out by himself. It was one of the indigenous requirements to sit at the dialogue table. From the government it is considered that this maneuver should end the process.
The hundreds of indigenous people who have returned to the surroundings of the Assembly celebrated the news with joy. Thanks to the mediation of the Catholic Church, the first informal meeting was also held between government delegates, led by Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Holguín, and indigenous leaders, with the radical Leonardo Iza at the helm (until now reluctant to negotiate), and the legislative president , Virgilio Saquicela, as guarantor. For now, the only progress is that the leaders of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (Conaie) will consult their bases to form a negotiating commission.
“They seek to fish in the chaos, they are the chaos. Together we are going to defeat them. This country does not need populist solutions,” Lasso stressed in his brief before Parliament, which has subsequently given way to the interventions of all the deputies.
If a retreat is not declared by his directive, Parliament now has 72 hours to vote on the continuity of the president, time that Correa and his followers have left to collect the votes that are missing. The former president, a refugee in Brussels to avoid serving his eight-year prison sentence for corruption, took advantage of the boards acquired as a star on Vladimir Putin’s television to demand that Lasso, in a video published on his social networks, leave “for his gigantic lies; due to unprecedented insecurity, our children cannot go out on the streets alone; due to the gigantic corruption, the Pandora Papers, a global shame; due to the brutal repression that has been exerted against their people in these days”.
The Ecuadorian Parliament is a faithful reflection of the country’s political crisis. Despite the fact that only a little over 12 months have elapsed since the swearing-in of its 137 congressmen, none of the blocks maintains its original composition. Even the correísta bench, the most loyal to its fled leader, lost 2 of its 49 deputies as soon as it began. It has been worse for Pachakutik, the indigenous political arm, which has not only broken into three dissimilar blocs, but has even suffered the dismissal of Guadalupe Llori, the first indigenous person to lead the Assembly.
The ideological and leadership divisions in the Democratic Left, one of the great surprises of the elections, has also caused its own fracture. Even the Bank of the National Agreement (BAN), formed around the government CREO Movement, stretched to 27 congressmen in the heat of its control of the Carondelet Palace, but in the corridors of the parliamentary headquarters it is betting on the departure of several independents .
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