Guillermo Lasso completed his first six months of government in Ecuador, in a four-year term.
The balance sheet has multiple nuances in a context of inherited economic crisis, but which is exacerbated by the pandemic.
In the first hundred days he fulfilled his main campaign promise: to vaccinate 9 million people in order to reactivate the economy, promote trust and legitimacy, especially in those sectors that did not vote for him.
It started off well. However, there are three factors that make its administration more complex: it lacks any majority in the Assembly (relative, absolute and qualified), its staff is on a learning curve, as it comes from the private sector, and is overwhelmed by reality: unemployment and insecurity.
The economic crisis prevents Lasso from expanding its political room for maneuver with social sectors that insist on a set of measures that are difficult to resolve, especially when the government faces the challenge of reducing, in 2022, a fiscal deficit of US$ 11 billion and resources run out with multilateral funders.
The Pueblos Parliament is the government’s main adversary and brings together sectors with the capacity to mobilize, protest and strike, such as the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), the United Workers Front (FUT), the National Union of Educators ( Unite), the Socialist Party, Popular Unity and the Pachakutik movement.
The dialogue between the government and Conaie configures a zero-sum scenario on the two occasions in which meetings were held to seek joint solutions, as the demands of the more radical indigenous leaders are not within the president’s script
They are: that the increase in fuel prices is stopped and the price freezes at the same level as before the presidency of Lasso, the end of relations with the multilaterals (IMF), the non-extraction of minerals, the fight against tax evasion, among the most important.
Although there are coincidences about the crisis situation on the part of the big players, there is no agreement. Conaie gave the government an ultimatum by the end of the month; if not, they will return to the streets.
From the government side, the emphasis has been on improving the agenda that the indigenous sector demands, since there are several problems that, paradoxically, are not included in Conaie’s demands.
The Sierra Centro communities are the ones that most suffer from chronic childhood malnutrition (38%), access to basic services such as water, school dropout at different levels of education, lack of connectivity and credit for the development of family and peasant farming activities. .
From this perspective, it appears that the government and indigenous leadership see problems and solutions with different eyes.
In addition to the difficulty of finding a consensual solution between the social sector and the government, there is the problem of insecurity, which, although not a new expression in this period, is getting worse due to the massacres registered in social rehabilitation centers, where violence and runaway gangs have led to 316 deaths so far.
The penitentiary administration has overloaded the State, as there are no conclusive answers, but rather a set of essays.
The government hypothesizes that organized crime and Mexico’s cartels wreak havoc, while on the other hand, they say the massacres are evidence of a struggle between gangs to control prisons.
The prison crisis opened a space for governability, as the Executive gained the support of representatives from the other functions of the State and the judiciary to work on joint solutions.
However, there is a tense calm, as the State is defenseless while different sectors of society debate whether the crime should be solved with an iron fist or based on negotiation processes with criminal gangs.
The right-wing Christian Social Party (PSC) raised the proposal to carry weapons, while the more moderate sectors have stood out for its absence, due to the complexity of the insecurity.
In this context, the majority of the members of the Constitutional Guarantees Committee of the Assembly approved the investigation report on the Pandora Papers, which insists on the need for the president to appear before the Legislature to explain whether or not he violated the Code of Ethics, that is, whether or not he had offshore companies at the time of registration of his candidacy.
Lasso left everything in the hands of his lawyers, in a scenario in which the correismo and Conaie’s political bloc, Pachakutik, sharpened against him. Despite the weakness of the Executive, the thesis of a possible dismissal was watered down.
From civil society emerges the proposal to promote a national dialogue between the main political actors and sectors of society in order to bring the positions of the conflicting parties closer together, but also to go beyond the current situation, as these are not conjunctural solutions or palliative measures when conflict may arise with greater force just around the corner.
This call is made to a government that lacks self-sufficiency when the complexity surpasses it, and to an opposition that assumes an intransigent posture without having concrete proposals to get out of the crisis.
It is a challenge for the government to obtain money to pay public sector salaries and to have resisted the different threats of strikes, mobilizations and protests.
The result of the approval of the tax reform sent to the Assembly by the Executive will be a thermometer of what is to come. If it passes through the Ministry of Law, the consequence will be a scenario that will delegitimize the proposal. If the votes for its approval are reached, there will be a small breather to start the following year.
It’s only been six months since the start of Lasso’s term and the political crisis is intense.
translation of Maria Isabel Santos Lima
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