Why didn’t Andrés Arauz win? | Opinion

Last Sunday’s elections in Ecuador ended in a blow to the citizens’ revolution project, the hardest in recent years. In this case, the defeat was not due to the “betrayal” of Lenín Moreno, but rather to a majority which, for the first time in a presidential election, decided not to support the former’s proposal. president Rafael Correa. As in any election, there is not a single cause to explain a result, but several causes and they can be grouped into three: the persecution that has taken place in recent years, the successes of the right and the mistakes of Andrés Arauz’s campaign.

In Ecuador, there was an organized, constant and internationally amplified campaign by the media on the alleged “corruption” of the previous government and which served as a prologue, as in Brazil and Argentina, to judicial decisions, which like a hitman with a robe and a code they’d end up a large part of the leadership of Alianza País, arrested, proscribed, persecuted or exiled. In my opinion, this was the main cause, although not the only one, of what happened last Sunday.

Second, we must mention the successes of the right. The main one was represent “anti-Corréism” which is a diffuse political expression and which has found its best representative in Guillermo Lasso. The “anti-correism” goes beyond the limits of the traditional right, which could be quantified in the 20% obtained in the first round. The election was similar to that of Argentina in 2015 when a majority deliberately voted for a neoliberal project, in this case embodied by Mauricio Macri, aimed at removing Kirchnerism from the government. In Ecuador, a similar logic was operated, where a majority voted for Lasso to prevent Correísmo’s return to power.

Finally, my own mistakes: with virtually no political experience and as a campaign-created candidate, Andrés Arauz made a good choice, in particular by expressing in the votes the good memory that part of the population has of the good management of the Correa government. But his political group failed to build bigger alliances, especially with the indigenous movement: Expressions of support from this sector were minimal and fragmentary. There was also no proposal, no agreements or in the speeches of those who had voted for the democratic left, which had obtained 16% in the first round. Moreover, and sometimes it was clear that whoever was speaking behind Arauz was Correa himself, so it was difficult to add to the “disenchanted correísmo” or to those who were looking for “new faces”, unable to leave the axis proposed by the right wing of Correísmo vs Antí Correísmo The exaggerated presence in the campaign of the former president has often facilitated this axis of debate. Yes The real dichotomy that is the neoliberal model and its disastrous consequences compared to the popular model could not be installed.

It is up to the popular movement to take stock of this experience. I believe that the idea that our region is in dispute, and that this is not happening one way, is ratified. There will be successes from the right and achievements of progressive proposals. Sometimes we are tempted to draw conclusions about the trends before each election, but I think we have to understand that to impose the popular movement we have to think that the right is going to unite, and that in order to have the possibility to succeed in an election , it is necessary to constitute a unit, which is to bring together those who think in the same way and who seek the magnitude which is to meet those who do not think of everything in the same way. We will have to meet with the various to face the antagonism of the right and its neoliberal model.

Oscar Laborde is president of the Parlasur Democracy Observatory