Ecuador: from horror to the electoral debate | Between den …

From Quito.Ecuador has moved from the electoral debate to the tally of the dead and the pain. It happened Tuesday night with aftershocks until Friday: several riots in four prisons across the country have left 78 dead. It wasn’t just the violence, but the form: people beheaded, burned, dismembered with chainsaws, grinders, body parts torn off. Horror, filmed and broadcast on social networks.

Along with images of violence reminiscent of that which has become customary in countries like Colombia where paramilitarism reigns, the screens showed desperate parents day after day, weeping, praying and denouncing the ineffectiveness of the state. The government, used to reacting late to crises, has done what it usually does: deny responsibility and accuse Correismo of being behind the events.

“It was organized from outside the prisons and orchestrated internally by those who challenge the leadership and drug trafficking throughout the national territory (…) the coincidence with the recent Colombian press complaint regarding the alleged funding of the ‘ELN is not by accident. political campaigns in Ecuador -a Andres Arauz-, it is very serious that there is money coming from drug trafficking on the political scene of the country “, declared the president Lenin Moreno in a message.

Moreno, who pointed out that the overcrowding of prisons is the work of his fight against crime, did not mention something that most politicians, analysts and scholars have pointed out: the reduction of the budget of the penitentiary system with all its consequences, the abolition of ministries such as Security and the recent history of massacres in several prisons in the country.

The events made headlines in Ecuador, with a system of TV channels showing little or nothing of what is happening in the country. However, although the eyes are focused on these traumatic events for the prisoners, their families and the country, The dispute continued within the framework of the electoral process which had its first round on February 7, and which will have the ballot on April 11 between Andrés Arauz, candidate of the Citizen Revolution, and Guillermo Lasso, candidate of the CREO alliance. and the Christian Social Party.

The result of the first lap continued to be attributed by Yaku Pérez, third in the race, who arrived Tuesday outside the National Electoral Council (CNE), in Quito, accompanied by a mobilization. There he announced the presentation before the electoral power of irregularities in 16 thousand minutes – out of a total of 39 thousand – a figure which then increased to 20 thousand. According to Pérez and the party Pachakutik, the fraud committed would have taken him away from second place and, consequently, from his passage to the second round.

Pérez’s complaint took a turn on Friday night, when The CNE announced that it found irregularities in only 31 of the documents delivered, which in reality were not 16,000, with “numerical inconsistencies and lack of signatures”, but 7,233, of which 1,453 were repeated. .

In this way, the CNE closed the fraud complaint filed by Pérez. Pachakutik’s candidate had previously anticipated that, if this outcome were to occur, he would file an appeal with the Electoral Litigation Court, and insist with the audit request presented to the Attorney General’s office to investigate the reported fraud. Along with this, the Confederation of Peoples of the Kichwa Nationality of Ecuador (Ecuarunari), who mobilized with Pérez, and is part of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie) announced Friday evening, after a crackdown, the start of a national strike.

The announcement of new combat measures was however marked by the simultaneity of the news of the division between Pérez, supported by Pachakutik and Ecuarunari, with two of the main leaders of Conaie: Jaime Vargas and Leónidas Iza, the two main protagonists, unlike Pérez, during the uprising in October 2019. Iza, for example, did not support the fraud complaint, and attributed the fact that Pérez did not reach the waiver because ” of a badly planned strategy from the national level ”.

The possibilities of street pressure by Pérez without the accompaniment of an important sector of Conaie then appear limited, as evidenced by the streets of Quito and certain points of contestation in the country during the week. As for La Conaie, the movement has officially announced that it will make its political position on the waiver known during an enlarged council to be held on March 10.

Thus, the threats that remain on the electoral process, and in particular the candidacy of Arauz, are found in the Office of the Prosecutor, both for the audit attempt, and for the international operation mounted via the Colombian prosecution and the Magazine week against the candidate for the citizen revolution, to accuse him of having been financed by the ELN of Colombia. Pérez, a strong anti-correista, said about the complaint that “if Arauz’s candidacy does not fall before April, then it will fall because she received illicit money from the narcopolitics”.

Faced with the attempted audit of the prosecution, Unión por la Esperanza, the coalition leading the candidacy of Arauz, announced that it had filed a request for constitutional provisional measures, for the suspension of the procedure ordered by the prosecution on the occasion investigation for suspected electoral fraud. In the coalition statement, it was noted that the attempted audit threatens the dates of the second round, in addition to being an interference by an authority outside the elections.

Thus, three weeks after the first electoral round, threats still weigh on the development of the electoral process, a situation which has been denounced inside and outside the country. This danger was revealed, for example, in the joint statement by the Presidents of Mexico and Argentina, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Alberto Fernández, who agreed to “follow closely the electoral processes in the region, such as the one currently taking place in Ecuador, vowing that it will be completed in due course and that democratic continuity is guaranteed”. Luis Arce, President of Bolivia, subsequently publicly endorsed the statement.

The coming days and weeks will be marked by possible new events in a decisive choice for the country and the region. The possibility is on the table for Ecuador to return to a progressive and Latin American project with Arauz, or to advance in a neoliberal deepening with Lasso. Moreno, who supports Lasso, tries in this context to condition the economic future with a last minute measure: the privatization of the Central Bank.