Insecurity damages the credibility of the government

Insecurity pushes down the approval and credibility ratings of the government of Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso, who ends the year with 13% and 12%, respectively, and who at the beginning of his administration in 2021 enjoyed a popularity rating of more than 70% .

This was revealed by a study of Opinion Profiles carried out in November on 613 adults from Quito and Guayaquil and which has a margin of error of four percentage points.

At the end of 2022, the political capital of the head of state shows a “wear and tear” in terms of representation, analyzed the director of the pollster, Paulina Recalde, in dialogue with The Associated Press.

Recalde attributed the low approval to insecurity, which ranks first among the concerns of Ecuadorians with 60%, a figure “that had never before reached such a high percentage.” Unemployment ranked second with 12% and corruption third with 11%.

91% of those surveyed said that the country is going “on the wrong path” while 38% revealed that they have thought about emigrating, indicated the Opinion Profiles board.

The events that marked 2022 were the indigenous mobilization of 18 days in the middle of the year, the prison massacres and the murder of a lawyer at a police training school, the expert considered.

For its part, the pollster CEDATOS pointed out that approval recovered from 27.1% in August to 29.2% in December and that the credibility of the president rose from 22.8% to 24.6% in the same period.

The firm also ranked insecurity as the main concern of Ecuadorian society with an “unpublished” figure of 55%, its executive president Ángel Polibio Córdova told AP. Before 2021, this index reached between 6% and 15%, always exceeded by the economic situation, he added.

Asked about the expectations of Ecuadorians for the next year, the manager stated that in a measurement by CEDATOS GALLUP at the international level “48% of the world say that 2023 will be difficult” compared to 34% of Ecuadorians who believe the same.

The opening for the association to other economies, the recent visit to the United States to obtain support for the fight against drug trafficking, the management of the external debt and the relationship with international organizations, among others, contributed to the recovery of the indices. rating of the government, said the expert.

The CEDATOS survey was carried out between November and December among 2,000 people in 25 cities and has a margin of error of two percentage points.

The political analyst and consultant Pedro Donoso considered that the year ends “with a society that believes very little in the State” and in its ability to manage social problems and that is “highly pessimistic” about the present and future of the country. These premises make 2023 look “complex” in terms of governance, he told the AP.

“The problem of insecurity it has to be solved from the integrality, but we do not see public policies in that sense”, he indicated. A probable scenario for 2023 could be that “social tension finds its escape valve in the electoral process,” otherwise “the streets heat up and violence resumes,” she warned.

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