Keys to understanding Guillermo Lasso’s victory …

From Quito

Ecuador woke up to the news that Guillermo Lasso will be the new president. None of the stress scenarios or disputes over the results occurred: the right-wing candidate won with 52.48%, 4,599,003 votes, 435,366 votes more than Andrés Arauz (47.60%). He accepted the defeat, called Lasso, as did several presidents of Latin America and the world who congratulated the next Ecuadorian president.

The future president thanked those who wrote to him for their networks, like Arauz himself and the candidate for vice-president, Carlos Rabascall, in building one of his main campaign ideas: the Ecuador of the meeting where everyone wins. “We must be united and respect our differences to move Ecuador forward, it’s everyone’s job, which begins today,” he wrote on his Twitter. During the day he was in Guayaquil, where he went to visit his parents’ grave.

Andrés Arauz, for his part, called on Monday “for peace and reconciliation on the basis of absolute respect for human rights, political persecution must end, we must treat ourselves as adversaries and not as enemies” .

Sunday’s result contradicts what most pollsters said, which is not atypical in electoral processes. The Citizen Revolution candidate had favorable figures after his victory in the first round, with nearly 13 points behind Lasso, a distance that the polls have marked, has narrowed over the weeks of campaigning for the second tower. The curves showed a rise in the Lasso, a high percentage of null and white votes, and Arauz’s slow growth at first. What few expected was the end result.

Several reasons can be considered as to why Lasso won, who was beaten in 2017 by Lenín Moreno and in 2013 by Rafael Correa., the reasons which make the strategies of each campaign, the characteristics of the confronted political forces, as well as the scenario in which the contest took place. Each independent part is in turn linked to the other.

In the first place, Arauz’s very candidacy was the product of the situation Correísmo faced: political persecution with the main leaders exiled in Belgium. The Correa-led political movement has come into the fray after several years of facing court cases in a deep legal process, with leaders outside the country, others under threat of convictions, in jail or removed. of political activity due to politics, judicial and media discharge against the citizen revolution.

Second, Correísmo faced a campaign with few organizational structures. The absence in the citizen revolution of a political party – not just an electoral one – as well as to a large extent of social, territorial, workers, feminist or indigenous movements is perhaps one of its central characteristics, in particular by reflecting on it in perspective with other progressive processes on the continent. This situation can be explained by political conceptions, and by Moreno’s betrayal and its impact inside.

Third, the campaign itself presented difficulties, with a persecuted movement, little political structure and the complexity in the construction of the figure of Arauz in particular in the relation – in terms of campaign – with Correa. How to succeed in the hard vote of the citizen revolution and, in turn, achieve the majority? This was one of the main issues, in a political scenario marked by the correismo / anti-correismo divide and the difficulty of transferring it to another, such as neoliberalism / anti-neoliberalism, or bank / country.

The correismo / anti-correismo divide was one of the points around which Lasso managed to extend his electoral flow until he reached the majority. The anti-correismo, present in society for various reasons – among which the systematic campaign to accuse corruption – allowed Lasso to draw votes from those who would not vote for the citizen revolution. It was also a determining element in understanding the positioning of the political forces, in particular Yaku Pérez and Xavier Hervas, respectively third and fourth in the first round.

Arauz called for the formation of a progressive, plurinational and social-democratic bloc, that is to say the Citizen Revolution, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie) and the democratic left. However, the cleavage of anti-correismo reduced this possibility, and Pérez / Conaie and Hervas chose not to position themselves directly for either of the two candidates. In the case of the indigenous movement, with internal conflicts over alliances, the decision was to call the “ideological null vote”, which influenced 1,739,870 null voters out of a total of 10,675,362 voters. The last-minute support of Vargas, president of Conaie, for Arauz does not seem to have changed this situation.

Lasso also had two central elements for his campaign: support from the country’s mainstream media, and a communications strategy that got his point across, with solid funding, and a deployment of dirty campaign resources. Thus, he built a discourse and an aesthetic, a fiction of his history and a politico-economic proposal of the country which will be gradually exposed as his government advances.

The horizon that opens with its victory is that of neoliberal deepening, in particular the domination of finance capital, of which it is a part. The dynamic of resistance to this agenda will be marked, in part, by how Conaie positions itself in relation to its internal conflicts – it will have an election of the authorities in May – and how the Correismo thinks and plans its strategy for this new stage.

The Latin American map will continue, for the moment, with the same picture of strength. Lasso’s victory indicates that the continent is in a context of disputes between projects without clear hegemony. The next presidential elections, in Peru, Chile and Brazil, will throw more conclusions to reflect on the current, complex, with reversals, determining national peculiarities, open.