The indigenous vote, key in Ecuador | The m …

From Quito.Ecuador is on the verge of presidential elections. Most polls favor Andres Arauz, Union for Hope candidate, with an average of four points above his opponent, Guillermo Lasso, the Creo Alliance and the Christian Social Party. Each closed the campaign on Thursday, the first in Manabí and Quito, the second in Guayaquil, centers of the mountains and the coast, central points of the electoral map.

The numbers also indicate that there is a high percentage of blank and invalid votes, around 27 percent of the electorate. These are votes that are contested by the candidates, who carried out the last days of the campaign under the state of emergency decreed by the government of Lenin Moreno However, this did not prevent the activities from taking place.

The composition of the blank vote is one of the central questions. One of the political actors who have positioned themselves in favor of an “ideological null vote” has been the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), the main indigenous movement in the country. The decision was taken on March 10 in an enlarged Council and then adopted by its electoral instrument, the Pachakutik party, who, in the first round, led the candidacy of Yaku perez, third in the result.

This decision of the Conaie had a turn on Saturday the third, when the president of the confederation, Jaime Vargasannounced his support for Arauz during a ceremony with the candidate. His public declaration, which was positively received in the ranks of the correismo, generated many reactions within the indigenous movement which brought to the table the various conflicts that had developed within it.

First, Conaie once again ratified his decision to call for an “ideological null vote” at a press conference: “no party represents indigenous peoples (…)” our vote is for dignity, against fraud, for the corruption which is anchored in the country, which is why we voted null, to have a clear conscience and to go out with great dignity in the street to claim our rights ”.

A similar position was taken by Pachakutik, who also proceeded to separate Vargas from the party as well as the one who accompanied Pérez in the presidential formula for having, in this case, launched a call to vote for Lasso. The former presidential candidate, present at the conference, announced that he would begin “a cleansing within Pachakutik”, and denounced the existence of a pact between Vargas and Correismo: “as a candidate for the presidential election and as Pachakutik, we received no support from Conaie’s leadership, Mr. Vargas, or if we did, it was a counter-campaign ”.

The opposing parties have accused each other of alliances that do not have majority approval. On the one hand, Vargas underlined that “Pachakutik is bound by the right, the leaders continue to support the right and we are not going to support a right which has crushed us”. This same review was made by Leonidas Iza, one of the main leaders of Conaie, who spoke in the midst of the conflict: “for four years there has been a ruling class, being indigenous, they agree with this fascist right which assassinates us, persecutes us” .

On the other hand, those at the center of Pachakutik, accused Vargas, as well as Iza, of having undeclared agreements with Correismo, a political process described at the conference as “dictatorship of Rafael Correa which humiliated the indigenous movement of Ecuador ”. This sector of the indigenous movement once again raised the impossibility of any rapprochement with Arauz and the citizen revolution.

The dispute that had taken place within the movement was thus exposed, centrally exacerbated by the candidacy of Pérez, which, according to Vargas and Iza, was not the product of the decision of the peoples and nationalities that make up Conaie – as it should be. . were, but only Pachakutik coordinators.

It is still unclear what the electoral impact of Vargas’ turn will be, as well as the maintenance of the ideological null vote, ratified by Conaie, Pachakutik and the leaders of the Iza peso, who have publicly called for the maintenance of unity. facing the dangers of division. Another question, which will be answered later, is what will be the relation of the main indigenous movement vis-à-vis the next government, something which will depend both on the winner on Sunday, as well as on the election of the authorities of the Conaie which will take place in early May.

For now, all eyes are on Sunday’s election, which will mark a turning point in Ecuador. Alerts concerning last-minute maneuvers are always maintained, in particular because, for example, of statements from sources of the National Electoral Council which reported an attempted fraud which was taking place within the electoral power. It is a competition that has been marked by irregularities from the first moment and in which the path that the country will take in the years to come is at stake: a neoliberal deepening, via Lasso, or the return to a progressive project, with Arauz.