Ecuador: the labyrinth towards the waiver and the two …

After two weeks in which the resolution of Ecuador’s first presidential round has been trapped in a quagmire of uncertainty, tension and suspense, with sudden turns that turn the scene upside down on a daily basis, finally The National Electoral Council has confirmed that it will be the former banker Guillermo Lasso who will contest the ballot with Andrés Arauz (Photo) April 11.

It remains to be seen how the challenge presented by Yaku Pérez opts – he was third with only 33 thousand votes– and the pressure exerted by the indigenous mobilization, but everything indicates that Ecuador will repeat the polarization which predominates in the region during this century, between a progressivism of various depths and a neoliberal right with the usual cookbook.

Then there will be a confrontation of openly differentiated projects, a politico-ideological dispute clearer than if Yaku Pérez had entered, an ambivalent character, expression of the most reactionary current of the indigenous movement, carrying a rather conservative political imprint but whose socio-electoral base expresses indigenism and ‘other sectors of the popular campaign moved away from the correísmo.

Election paper

The end result ratified Arauz’s triumph with 32.7% and a small advantage from Lasso (19.74) over Pérez (19,39), who from the first day denounces the fraud and demands the count of the votes: the following scene shows a principle of agreement between the two candidates, the CNE and the OAS to review the minutes in 17 provinces. There was a great pact of all the anti-correista axis.

But two days later, Lasso stepped back and the divorce with Pérez was consummated thanks to a passionate shootout of tweets. Finally at the CNE there was no consensus to reopen the ballot boxes and this Sunday the results were formalized, although There is no need to exclude further ups and downs and maneuvers of the judiciary.

In this complex theater of operations, pressures and negotiations, the leading role of the OAS has been highlighted., which brings more doubts than guarantees, considering that his last stellar performance was to invent the fraud in Bolivia that led to the 2019 coup. The situation was also clouded by the interference of the Colombian government, activating a binational “judicial false positive” and sending the attorney general for an alleged financial contribution from the ELN guerrillas to Arauz. The operation had been published by the magazine Week, close to the ruling uribismo. In recent years, judicial persecution (today they call it law) and fake news (today they call it fake news) applied by power groups have found fertile ground in Ecuador. Lenín Moreno; Although they succeeded in banning Rafael Correa, they could not prevent Correísmo from reemerging as the first force (and the first minority in Congress).

The dual polarization dilemma

Both Arauz and Lasso will have to develop alliances and seduce part of the outside electorate to reach the Carondelet Palace. The first big question is what will happen to the nearly 20% candidate Pachakutik got, political arm of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), the organization that has led popular uprisings over the past three decades.

Pérez undoubtedly capitalized on the spirit of the October 2019 sessions against Moreno and IMF adjustment, although he had a marginal role. CONAIE, although it has closed ranks with its candidate, causes strong internal tensions because of its heterogeneity. Leonidas Iza, one of its most combative leaders, had warned that any agreement with Lasso would be “illegitimate and unacceptable:” We have closed all options for dialogue with the right, wherever it comes from. A few days later, Pérez, who in 2017 had supported Lasso (“better a banker than a dictatorship”), now recalculated: “Do not even dream that we are going to support Lasso’s organized crime”.

The other important part of the votes at stake is that of the businessman Xavier Hervas, the “candidate Tiktok” who obtained a surprising 15.6% gain a foothold in the young urban electorate and also proposed a front against Arauz.

The candidatures of Pérez and Hervas express for the most part an anti-neoliberal vote, consolidated with the disaster left by Moreno. Focus of this antinomy, Lasso appears with little luck. The former banker, member of Opus-Dei, symbol of traditional politics and the economic disaster of the 1990s, arrives on waiver with a much lower number of votes than in the presidential elections he lost in 2013 and 2017, with a weak image and too conservative speech. Its only letter is to request a useful vote against the correísmo.

It is the second antinomy which complicates the calculations. Ecuadorian politics of the past 15 years have been marked by correísmo / anti-correísmo. And the rise of Pérez and Hervas is also the product of this rupture: it embodies an anti-establishment vote, ideologically diverse or diffuse but permeated by the demonization of the correísmo associated with corruption.

Arauz will have to face the tricks of the powers that be, but above all he has the challenge of building bridges and rebuilding ties with much of the indigenous, environmental and feminist sectors to which Correa has been hostile. To save the progressive and young vote captured by Pérez and Hervas. Propose an agenda that makes it possible to problematize extractivism and to detach from the conservative positions of its mentor, such as the right to legal abortion. Winning the ballot but above all facing a possible government that allows Correismo to “come back better”.

In short, if Arauz succeeds in making the neoliberalism / anti-neoliberalism antinomy prevail at the polls, he will surely take a new step towards the revival of progressive governments and the reconstruction of Latin American integration.

NODAL editor. Author of the book “América Latina. Traces and challenges of the progressive cycle ”. He hosts the radio show “Al sur del Río Bravo”.