Ecuador: A possible blow for Lawfare | Opinion

After a very difficult year, this Sunday, February 7, the general elections will take place in Ecuador. In a context of high party fragmentation – from both the ruling party and the opposition – 16 lists present presidential candidates.

Based on data from previous surveys, the candidate backed by former President Rafael Correa, Andrés Arauz (Union for Hope) would have an advantage over neoliberal businessman Guillermo Lasso (Opportunity Creation Party), and further behind would be followed by the native chief Yaku perez (Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement) with an environmental and social agenda that includes several of the demands of the assemblies that took place during the mobilizations of 2019. The official candidate Ximena Pena (Country Alliance) operates outside.

After almost four years of government, Lenin Moreno will leave the presidency with a negative image of almost 90%. After assuming with permission from his predecessor Correa, he betrayed his bases with a conservative turn.

With him come the policies of adjustment and austerity, the impoverishment of the population, social conflicts, the judicial persecution of the former allies, foreign indebtedness with the return of the International Monetary Fund and an acute economic and health crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic and by the own incompetence of the government direction.

Everything seems to indicate that this Sunday two competing models are presented for the Ecuadorian country: on the one hand, a return to the path proposed by the Correismo of growth with inclusion and social policies fight against the effects of the pandemic that Arauz would represent; and on the other, the continuity of Lenin Moreno’s neoliberal project offset by Lasso’s commercial position.

On the other hand, there is a point that deserves to be underlined: Rafael Correa was going to be a member of the presidential formula as vice-president of Arauz, but in September 2020, the Ecuadorian electoral justice banned him from appearing on the grounds that he was not physically in the country to register. And let us remember that, previously, he had been convicted along with eighteen former officials for the “alleged” crime of aggravated active bribery in the case. “Bribe 2012-2016”.

What is most striking about the case is that the sentence initially imposed on one of the accused was reduced since she presented a manuscript “notebook” in which she recounted these apparent acts of corruption during the Correísmo (understandably .. .).

In addition, it was later discovered that in the same case the judge was informed of the modification he had to make to change the title page of the crimes attributed to increase the sentence of the accused. All of this, of course, courtesy of the Lenin Moreno government.

The only proven crime is that of procedural fraudAll within the framework of a judicial war to discipline opponents, admittedly quite dirty but not new for our Latin America (as they have been consumed in Argentina and Brazil).

As if that weren’t enough, he adds the Balda affair, where Correa was linked to the attempted kidnapping of former lawmaker Fernando Balda in Bogotá (2012). On this occasion, by coincidence, a former policeman (asylum in Argentina) confessed to having received pressure from the government of Lenin Moreno to involve Correa in this event in exchange for a light sentence and appointments to public posts for his relatives, thus disrupting the mounted operation.

So, it is more than clear that Lawfare works with the same script, only changing actor depending on the location.

So we can conclude – even more after the recent revelations in Brazil of the former judge Moro with prosecutors to facilitate conviction Lula without convincing evidence – that these elections are a great opportunity to strike a new blow and expose these manipulative strategies carried out by certain actors and interest groups, who cite the Republic in their speeches as a slogan to hunt without suspicion and hide behaviors that are far from the rule of law that they claim to defend …

* Member of the Mercosur