Guillermo Lasso, the banker is still there | Eleccio …

Guillermo Lasso, businessman, shareholder and former chairman of Banco de Guayaquil, and the Former super minister of the economy who was in charge of the bank holiday and the corralito before the dollarization of Ecuador. Lasso, a speculator too expanded his fortune in this period, between 1999 and 2000, when it went from 1 million declared to 31 million dollars with the bonds he bought after the holiday.

It will be the Lasso ran for the third consecutive time as a presidential candidate. Born in the port city of Guayaquil, he is the youngest of 11 siblings, is a member of Opus Dei and mainly attracts the traditional electorate from the coastal region and appears to have gained the support of a coalition of opposing groups. to the citizen revolution of Correa. after the 2013 and 2017 elections.

Aparicio Caicedo, who is preparing the candidate’s government plan, assured that “Lasso is a capable and honest leader. A person who is ready to govern this country and who does not need to improvise because he has a plan made for many years for Ecuador ”.

Lasso, who boasts of working since the age of 15 and has a university education in economics, a postgraduate degree in business administration and an honorary doctorate from the University of the Americas, he assured El Universo newspaper in 2012 that life had made him liberal, a philosophy that ‘he still defends.

He was an official from two governments who were unable to complete their term due to the massive protests and economic crises that caused. He was the Economy Minister in Jamil Mahuad’s presidency, when the country was going through the public holiday and corralito that preceded the dollarization of the country. He also served as governor of Guayas and roving ambassador to Lucio Gutiérrez’s presidency, a post he held briefly in 2003 until the president had to step down from power by helicopter.

He was also in charge of the acquisition of Mavesa, the local representative of the Japanese truck factory Hino, which he then sold during the financial crisis that hit the country in 1999, when he was super minister. of the Economy, in order to capitalize the Bank.

After the failure of Gutiérrez’s government, Lasso first joined the liberal UNO movement, but did not run for president until 2011, when he decided to form the Creo coalition with former members of the the UN, Izquierda Democrática, Movimiento Concertación and leaders of the private sector. He lost against Rafael Correa by a big difference. In 2017, on the contrary, he lost only two percentage points against Lenin Moreno.

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Elections in Ecuador: Pachakutik’s candidate

Yaku Pérez, the native chief

With the political capital of the October 2019 protests – when became one of the most media leaders of the indigenous protest against the Moreno government– Yaku Pérez, activist and former governor, aspires for the first time for the presidency of Ecuador with an environmentalist and ecumenical discourse which seeks to capture Ecuadorians tired of the polarization in the country.

He is 51 years old and defines himself as “close to a flexible left” and militant of “communitarianism”. Born in the community of Cachipucara, in the Andean province of Azuay, Pérez spent his childhood on a farm where his parents were workers. At the age of five, she was in charge of fetching water for her house, an experience that taught her to value and defend this resource, which she would later do with her activism. Its name, in Quechua, means mountain water. The injustices he witnessed on the farm, where the boss mistreated his family, led him to study law and be his community’s premier advocate.

Pérez completed four postgraduate courses in watershed management, environmental law, indigenous justice, and criminal law. He won the candidacy of the Pachakutik party, political arm of the indigenous movement, after a confrontation with the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), the other leader of the popular movement better organized and with the greatest capacity for mobilization in the country.

As well He was President of the Confederation of Kichwa Peoples of Ecuador for two periods between 2013 and 2019, the third time it has been featured He was elected governor of Azuay for the period 2019-2023, a post he resigned in October last year to register his candidacy for president.

“My biggest dream is that whether it’s me or whoever it is, it will change the fate of Ecuador’s history, of those who go to bed hungry.”said Pérez, who is also president of the Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI) in a recent interview with the newspaper Universe.

He started his political career in 1996, when He was a councilor of the southern city of Cuenca, to later become president of the Federation of Indigenous and Peasant Organizations of Azuay (FOA) in 2003. His nomination as a candidate for Pachakutik came precisely from the FOA, whose current leader, Mario Farez, assured him that he was the most suitable person because of his experience in defending the rights of his community, to know the national and international reality and for the good relations with the communities.

Nature lover and pantheist (thought that considers that the universe, nature and God are the same), his life is also marked by activism in favor of the defense of water sources and his opposition to mining concessions. These struggles turned him into one of the most visible opponents of the government of former President Rafael Correa. He has been detained five times for participating in protests under the government of the former president. Pérez spoke out in the 2017 elections in favor of Guillermo Lasso, the conservative candidate who faced Lenín Moreno in the second round, the runner-up of Correa at the time who ultimately won. “A banker is preferable to a dictatorship,” he defended himself at the time.