“The era of caudillos is over”

In front of leaders from all over Latin America, the former banker Guillermo Lasso has become the new president of Ecuador in front of the National Assembly in Quito, the country’s capital. “In this new century of republicanism that we have started, the era of caudillos is overThe banker said in his opening speech, referring to the country’s independence, which is celebrated on May 24.

Lasso, a 65-year-old member of Opus Dei, was sworn in at a ceremony led by the head of the unicameral National Assembly, Guadalupe Llori Barca. The former banker had started the day by attending a mass in the metropolitan cathedral of Quito, accompanied by his family and ministers appointed to the new government.

El flamante presidente, cuyo mandato durará cuatro años, mealó múltiples temas en su presentación, desde el complejo escenario económico del país y los fracasos de los gobiernos anteriores, hasta su promesa de que con el terminarían viejos en antagonisma nue y se se the country.

“We will not persecute anyone and we will rule for everyone. It means not to rule against anyone, nor in favor of privileged sectors,” he said.

“The era of political persecution is over. I have come not to satisfy the hatred of a few, but to appease the hunger of many,” he said, noting that the “The only answer to authoritarianism is democracy.”

During his presentation, Lasso also spoke of the need to fight poverty and continue to fight the pandemic. In turn, he called for full and true equality in the country, including gender equality, among the “meeting points” that his government will promote.

“When an Ecuadorian woman earns less than a man, when she is mistreated, it turns us into a morally tainted country. Women’s rights are human rights and We will apply them because there is well-being and the future“He apologized.

The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, and King Felipe VI of Spain, in addition to the leaders of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, were in attendance. Argentina was represented by Foreign Minister Felipe Solá, who handed Lasso a letter from President Alberto Fernández, in which the president renewed his “best wishes” for the management what it starts.

During the April 11 poll, the former banker took revenge on the former socialist president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) by defeat his dolphin, the economist Andrés Arauz, by 4.72 points.

For his four-year term, Lasso promises a “government of the encounter” that will seek to overcome the polarization between correísmo and anticorreísmo, and a fierce fight against corruption.

Since his departure from power, Correa has lived in Belgium, where his wife is from, and was sentenced in 2020 in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption.

Several former officials of his progressive government are also jailed for corruption, including his former vice-president Jorge Glas, imprisoned for six years since 2017 for receiving millionaire bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

“We are not going to allow impunity. Let the corrupt be afraid, normal. Let those who have abused Ecuadorians be afraid, normal,” Lasso said last week during his cabinet presentation.

With the forces dispersed and without an absolute majority in Congress, his Creando Oportunidades (CREO) movement had to ally with sectors of the center and left to achieve a front that took control of the Legislative Assembly, excluding of the correismo.

With the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as Ecuador’s main financier in return for structural reforms, social sectors oppose tax increases and privatization plans.

Lasso anticipated public-private partnerships and concessions to obtain resources.