Andrés Arauz: “They are trying to jeopardize the process …

“The measure gives Moreno exceptional powers, which crosses the date of the election and obviously generates a conflict of competences in what will be the electoral process”, explains Arauz. The state of emergency prohibits “the realization of all events of influx and mass congregation”, and provides for the deployment of the national police and armed forces “in the restoration of public order”.

With this measure “the President of the Republic could modify the protocols of the electoral process when the electoral function is an independent function, and we fear that the process and the result will be manipulated, even more if the process is manipulated and requires citizen mobilization on the same day or the following days, the state of emergency would in principle make it impossible to mobilize citizens in defense of their democratic rights.

The concern has grounds: “There are already rumors that there are intentions to manipulate the elections, the electoral process is in danger,” says Arauz. This new alert, at the door of the protest, is part of an “electoral process full of threats, rights against our participation, from the moment of registration, when they decreed the non-existence of our party, we we had to ally ourselves with another match “.

The same process was threatened, as happened when Arauz’s victory appeared to be in one round on February 7, and then there were “serious threats to postpone” the date. The possibility now of a postponement, given the situation of the state of emergency, “is not impossible”, he said. “I hope that the electoral authorities act with rationality and with full respect for democracy, the Ecuadorian people are not able to support an extension of the presidential term of Lenin Moreno.”

The crisis and the countryside

Ecuador is in crisis. Arauz traveled the country during the campaign: “it allowed me to reconnect with each of the territories, their productive vocations, their problems in terms of health, services, their need for public policies and institutional development, but also despair. , the anguish and pain of the Ecuadorians who suffer, there is a general feeling of abandonment, an indignation at the negligence of the government in the management of the pandemic and the economic crisis ”.

His campaign was deployed in different regions of the country, the coast, the mountains and the Amazon, and the images of proximity between Arauz and the people were constant in every place. “This trip commits me even more and with increasing strength and firmness, to give everything on my part to be able to restore dignity to Ecuadorian families,” he said.

Arauz faces, simultaneously, a dirty campaign waged by Lasso and his advisor, Jaime Durán Barba, with the use of social media trolls, the payment of Venezuelan migrants to campaign against him, or accusations over his years of work in the state.

“It’s a sign of desperation because of the gap and the distance that exists between candidate Lasso and myself,” he said. “This dirty campaign has been vile, cynical, it sought out the character’s murder, confusing audiences on my path of service to the country and penetrating the most intimate thing each of us has, which is our family life.

The dirty campaign was not limited to Lasso’s team, but to institutions, like the Attorney General’s office, which, in collaboration with the Colombian attorney’s office and Semana Magazine, constructed the bogus fundraising accusation that ‘Arauz was reportedly received by the Liberation Army. National (ELN) of Colombia. “They said that I had met an ELN delegate in February 2020, I was not a candidate at the time, I was studying in Mexico, I did not live in Ecuador, which clearly shows that the information is false. “

Something similar happened in Argentina, where Clarín published false information that Arauz applied the Sputnik V vaccine during his visit to Buenos Aires, an impossible fact: the candidate was in Argentina until December 5 and the vaccine arrived on the 24th, and on the 19th of that same, he was positive for the coronavirus test. Clarín knew these facts, but the title was that Arauz had been vaccinated.

“They never came to check anything, they never contrasted that with my version, they never called me to ask my opinion, and through this news in Argentina, which was reproduced by the Ecuadorian media, they wanted to install a story in which I had been vaccinated. This is called projective psychology, and it was Lasso’s friends, including senior executives at Banco de Guayaquil – which was chaired for years by Lasso- who were vaccinated on the government’s preferred list. Lenin Moreno ”.

In view of this, the candidate presented, through the lawyer Eduardo Barcesat, “some actions in front of the newspaper Clarín to correct this fact and preserve my reputation, the Ministry of Health of Argentina has already published a statement several weeks ago, denying the fact that I was vaccinated ”.

The government plan

Moreno seeks to carry out the last privatizations before leaving the government on May 24: the oil wells, the National Telecommunications Corporation, the radio space, the Banco del Pacífico, or the Esmeraldas refinery. “The most dangerous action of all is that which involves the privatization of the Central Bank of Ecuador (ECB), the governance of the ECB is privatized, that is to say who is in charge, Moreno wants to name delegates who will last five years in power before leaving, the ECB’s reserves are privatized and the regulation of interest rates and commissions of the private financial system is privatized ”.

The attempt to privatize the ECB, the law of which is currently in the National Assembly, is part of the project of the banking sector, of financial capital – the sector to which Lasso belongs – which benefited the most in Ecuador in the Moreno years. This policy is promoted, in turn, by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with which Arauz met in Washington before the first round, after meeting Wall Street in New York.

“We insisted on the fact that any legal reform conditioned by an agreement with the IMF must strictly respect our Constitution, and in the Constitution the ECB is public and is part of the executive function, it has no independence, this is not another function, it is not another state power, it cannot be privatized ”.

During the meeting with the IMF, Arauz explained “that in the context of the pandemic an aggressive fiscal adjustment cannot be promoted, we explained that the liquidity in dollars must be preserved within the Ecuadorian economy, we explained our model of public investment and sustainable development for the coming years, and above all that I would like to say that they reacted favorably ”.

The candidate of the citizen revolution, when he assumes, will be faced with an image of health and economic crisis. “We have fundamental priorities, and it is to attend health, educational and economic emergencies, all this year we will devote ourselves to attending these emergencies, universal vaccination, reestablishment of the public health system, return of children to class, provision teachers in vaccines, the Internet as a human right, provision of computer equipment so that children can continue their studies, ”he says.

The government plan will have to face the deep crisis, before which, he explains, it will carry out measures such as the granting of a thousand dollars to a million families in the first week, “a policy of credit and social debt payment, including the payment of debts to local communities to revive the public works economy, ”and a massive vaccination plan.

“Once this recovery is deployed, we will continue to recover the democratic institutionality of our country, which has been the victim of crude manipulation, and at the same time recover the development model linked to productive and agricultural development, construction from public works. , housing and public services, ”he says.

Arauz’s perspective is Latin American. “My policy directs decisively and head-on towards integration”, he affirms. During his campaign months he had encounters with, for example, Evo Morales, Alberto Fernández or Pepe Mujica. integration that we are experiencing today, at the beginning of this century ”. This will be his priority, he explains, in matters of foreign policy, “with international ecological justice”.

For the moment, urgent attention is being paid to the conduct of the April 11 elections, which are threatened due to the state of emergency, in a political framework where numerous irregularities and obstacles have already arisen against the candidacy of Arauz. “We aspire to respect for democracy in Ecuador and the will of the Ecuadorian people to be energetic in favor of the recovery of the homeland, of the future and of its dignity,” he concludes.