The upcoming course in Ecuador | Opinion

After having overcome countless legal obstacles filed by the National Electoral Council (following express orders from Lenín Moreno to exit the game, law by correísmo) the couple of Andrés Arauz and Carlos Rabascall were able to participate in the elections and win in the first round. Although the polls predict a vote above 36% (only one almost mathematically matches Arauz and Lasso’s numbers), the truth is that At the end of the day and in the midst of a botched vote recount, Arauz won 32.15% of the vote. They follow him, facing off head-to-head and separated by twenty-seven hundredths of Yaku Pérez (19.87%) of Pachakutik and the banker Guillermo Lasso., who in his third presidential bet obtained 19.60% of electoral preferences. However, a small number of votes remains to be calculated, which, given its regional location, could reverse this situation and position Lasso in second place. But as of this writing, the CNE had not yet completed the review.

There were two surprises in yesterday’s election: one was Pérez’s advance, that in all previous polls, he never seemed able to make the second round by contending for a place that Lasso’s team took for granted; the other was the sudden irruption of Xavier Hervas, a “dark horse” as we say in Mexican political jargon, who, out of nowhere (around 2%) jumped to 16% of the vote in less than three weeks requiring intense – and very effective – work on social networks, especially the Tik Tok. Is Facebook, young people tell me, “a thing of the old”; Hervas knew this too and drew a significant flow of votes from the youth with his strategy. There was also another novelty, not so surprising in itself, but because of the categorical nature of its manifestation: the collapse of the Ecuadorian historical right. On this occasion Lasso and his party, CREO, joined forces with Jaime Nebot’s social Christians (For nearly 19 years, mayor of Guayaquil, who, in a demonstration of inconsistency, never prevented him from launching a flamboyant criticism of the “undemocratic re-election” of Rafael Correa, Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez) and his successor as mayor, Chyntia Viteri. The two parties obtained, separately, 45% of the votes in the first round of the 2017 presidential election; now, unified, they barely scratch 20%. Lenín Moreno dealt a devastating blow to neoliberalism: the candidate of the ruling party, his Minister of Culture Juan Fernando Velasco Torres, garnered an embarrassing 0.82% of the vote

What is coming in the next few weeks is an exhausting election campaign lasting more than two months because it is only on April 11 that the second round will take place.. While, a hard battle is underway in the National Electoral Council and the judiciary to determine who will contest the presidency with the candidate of Correísmo. Speculation over who would be most vulnerable to an offensive strategy from Arauz is rampant. Hay quienes prefieren al banquero, porque en ese caso and contrast between ambas propuestas sería de una claridad absoluta y además porque Lasso “co-gobernó” con Moreno estos últimos cuatro años, y tendrá que hacerse cargo de la debacle en que ambos han sumido al Country. This is true, but it is also true that if there is one politician in Ecuador who has enormous financial, media, political and judicial power, that person is none other than Lasso.

He can buy many wills, mobilize the media and judicial contract killers and invest heavily in his campaign without any difficulty; the entire establishment will line up unconditionally behind his candidacy. Others around Arauz say they would prefer a second round with Pérez, although his seemingly progressive, left-wing rhetoric can mislead many unsuspecting people with his water and environmental defense. Deceive, he says, because as Chico Méndes, the great Brazilian environmentalist murdered by landowners, recalled, “the uncritical ecology of capitalism is just gardening”, and Pérez does not criticize capitalism, nor does he raise the need for its historic improvement. Moreover, he has repeatedly attacked the “dictatorial and fraudulent” governments – in his own words, of Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua.– And in this area, its alignment with Washington’s directives is total and does not seem to have happened by chance. Not only that: like Lasso, he is in favor of eliminating taxes on foreign currency outflows, a hypersensitive problem for bankers and the Ecuadorian business elite.

On the other hand, it should be remembered that during the 2017 waiver, Pérez asked the indigenous communities to vote for Lasso. He said verbatim that “a banker is better than a dictatorship”. A man of good education and imbued with Christian recognition thanks to decades of activism at Opus Dei, Lasso assured a few days ago that if he did not reach the second round, he would support Pérez to defeat “populist totalitarianism” embodied in a satanic way. in the figure of Rafael Correa.

There is no doubt that the next two months will be full of novelties, and not a few surprises in Ecuador. Hopefully at the end of this winding journey we have good news for the Great Fatherland.