In less than a week, Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso will officially call legislative and presidential elections, after dissolving the National Assembly in full trial accused of corruption. A battle of political forces opens in advance, leaving Ecuadorians two alternatives to govern the country. The analysis of the possible scenarios with the political scientist Marco Romero Cevallos.
Hours before the second day of the trial that sought to remove him, the president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, ended with a National Assembly whose majority accused him of embezzlement.
By applying the ‘cross death’, Lasso eliminated the legislature and called general elections, thus condemning his government to end in the next six months. Marco Romero Cevallos, a political scientist from the Simón Bolívar Andean University, explains to us which are the main political forces that will take the reins of the country.
“The first force in the country is correísmo. He has a hard force, a hard power that can reach 20, 25% of the electorate in the best of cases, and it gives him enough weight to go to a second round. It is true that correísmo came out stronger in the last local elections, but it is also true that this is not enough to ensure winning a presidency. But the level of hard voting, of rejection of correísmo has also grown and is very large. And so, in that sense, any type of alliances can arise in that scenario”.
In this framework, what would those alliances be? “The level of insecurity that has been experienced in Ecuador for at least two, three years has led to placing the issue of security as the main concern after unemployment for the population. Any far-right force that channels discontent and insecurity can gain significant weight,’ estimates Cevallos.
Regarding what can be expected from the last days of the government of Guillermo Lasso, the political scientist Marco Romero Cevallos, highlights the following points: “Predictably, the areas in which the Government is going to concentrate its attention, in my opinion, they are three. One is the issue of labor laws. Second, the issue of social security standards. And, thirdly, the privatization of public financial entities and particularly the Banco del Pacífico”.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) has until next Wednesday to call presidential and legislative elections to complete the four-year period, which began in May 2021.
The elections will be held within a period of 90 days, and Lasso, 67, can stand as a candidate.
