Former President Correa’s party chooses presidential candidate

QUITO- The political party of former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa announced on Saturday that Luisa González will be his candidate for the presidency of the country for the early elections in August.

González, a lawyer by profession, held positions in the public sector during the Correa government (2007-2017). Recently, she was an assembly member for the province of Manabí until the current president Guillermo Lasso dissolved the Assembly.

Andrés Arauz accompanies González as a vice-presidential candidate. Arauz, who also held various public positions during Correa’s administration, lost in the 2021 presidential election to Lasso.

“I am convinced of this mission and I have the strength, the capacity, the courage to lead it,” González said Saturday.

“We are going to recover the homeland, we are going to recover the dignity of the Ecuadorian people,” he added.

Ecuadorians will go to the polls on August 20 to choose Lasso’s successor, who will not participate as a candidate in the anticipated elections. His party will not appear in the legislative election either.

Lasso, a 67-year-old former conservative banker, decided in mid-May to dissolve the Legislature and shorten its term that was due to end in 2025, amid a political trial promoted by Correa’s Revolución Ciudadana (RC) party.

The move brought forward elections scheduled for 2025. The president-elect and lawmakers will sit until 2025, when the scheduled vote will take place.

An Ecuadorian court sentenced Correa, who lives in Belgium, to eight years in prison in 2020 for a bribery case. The former president has denied the accusations and describes the case against him as a political persecution.

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