Guillermo Lasso is experiencing a time of political turmoil whose intensity could plunge Ecuador into extreme uncertainty.
If its governability problems could be predicted from the vote obtained by its party in February 2021 (Creo has 12 of the 137 seats), the other aspects of the situation were less predictable and refer to its own governmental limitations.
The way in which he processes this impasse will determine whether the right continues on the path of radicalization and democratic closure, seen in Lenin Moreno’s four-year term (2017-2021), or whether it fulfills its promise to respect the Republic that the former banker did in his recent possession.
amplified crisis
Faced with the prison massacres that are shaking the country, the Executive has not even been able to identify those responsible for the horror. The idea of an inefficient cabinet is spreading.
After a rapid rise due to the accelerated progress of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign, the president suffered a drastic drop in popularity just five months into his term.
Rapid impoverishment, falling purchasing power, over-indebtedness of families, the migration crisis and growing insecurity are pressing problems that the government only seems to face with reference to the past, blaming former president Rafael Correa.
More than the decline in the social assessment of power, however, we are witnessing a drop in expectations about the future and possibilities for change.
The depth of the social crisis prevents this skepticism from being associated only with political disillusionment, but its rapid implementation in the new political cycle reveals a deficit of social consensus in the face of a government in which the project of the ruling classes assumes refounding pretensions.
His first structural reform initiatives provoked an immediate popular outcry and several days of protest before the Pandora Papers’ revelations.
While suspicions of Lasso as a historic tax evader are not new, the scandal has revealed an intolerant and erratic president: he confronted the local press that ran the news, alluded to a conspiracy of Geoirge Soros, an infallible figure in the extreme’s global narrative. right, and refused to be held accountable to Parliament after saying he would appear where necessary.
The discrediting of the president’s words illuminates a broader problem of loss of governmental legitimacy.
Poor governance, inefficient management, consensus erosion and accelerated delegitimation condense, for the time being, the precocious political crisis of a government that, supported by the establishment and the power of the media, could not imagine anything beyond the immediate acclaim of the corporate reformism it represents.
reasons for disillusionment
Between the first and second round of presidential elections, Lasso grew 32 points. Your opponent, half. The Citizen Revolution (RC) lost its first presidential elections in 15 years.
The epic comeback elevated the new president to the podium of anti-populist heroes. Financial markets were celebrating – country risk dropped 345 points. The mainstream press was euphoric: finally, the country was “viable”, a “better Ecuador”.
Lasso’s unshakable acclaim for mainstream opinion and his clear victory in the second round seemed to implant the idea that, with the end of the elections, the political conflict was also over.
All that remained was for the elected president to carry out the elites’ historic project, finally unlocked by the vote of the citizens.
The quasi-imperial construction of his mandate would explain why Lasso forgot his promise to forge a “gathering government.” This thesis emerged after its scant vote (20%) in the first round.
He alluded to the imperative to depolarize the country and generate governmental confluences. This forced him, before the vote, to show that he was moving from the far right to the political center, where preferences were concentrated.
Despite being a member of Opus Dei, he even adopted some theses from the women’s movement. The virtual reformulation of its political identity persuaded the undecided and propelled its victory.
The promise of change that Lasso carried came to contain a promise to change his own strength. Abandoning this option multiplied the disappointments.
As soon as Lasso took office, he began to operate as if the only number that condenses national representation was the 52.5% who elected him.
From this imaginary majority, the government withdraws into its own space, reaffirms its extremes and feels satisfied with the factors of real power.
Between the overestimation of popular strength and the realistic assessment that factual powers (economic groups, military, media, embassies) support his government, the president is now playing a game of bypassing democratic institutions.
The creation of the cabinet marked a first turning point.
Lasso surrounded himself with the libertarian professionals who have been with him for a long time, from his Fundación Ecuador Libre and the former Christian Democrat party with which he cohabited as an official of former president Jamil Mahuad (1998-2000).
No relevant decision space was entrusted to potential allies.
He also broke up with his electoral partner, the Christian Social Party (PSC) of Jaime Nebot, the powerful former mayor of Guayaquil. In so doing, it fragmented the already heterogeneous Creole right-wing family and alienated itself from its more realistic and experienced expression in state administration.
The regime’s first mega-project revealed its dogmatism. Among other issues, the rule seeks to separate work and rights.
The reform proposes that two people who perform similar jobs be hired in different ways. A parallel work regime is created that ignores rights, allows the working day to be increased to 12 hours, recognizes stability only after the fourth year of employment, introduces the figure of “fair dismissal” and even suggests that the worker must compensate the employer in certain cases.
The recentralization of government was a campaign operation. Not even the understandings with the Pachakutik (a party linked to the indigenous movement) and with the Izquierda Democrática (with social-democratic roots, today a “patchwork”), to control the Assembly, softened the posture of the ruling party.
Amid requests for dialogue with popular parties and organizations, the Executive has presented a pro-forma budget (2022) that expands cuts in social security, health and education, anticipates layoffs of public employees and privatization of public goods and prioritizes the payment of debts.
Without considering the health catastrophe and the precariousness of life lived since 2020, Lasso persists with the agenda that caused them. The radical impulse of the right is inseparable from the political use of the crisis to deepen inequality.
The Assembly’s refusal to deal with the Executive’s megaproject, due to formal failures, and the announcement of mobilizations burst the bubble.
Applauding the president is no longer the only background music. Upset, Lasso accused Nebot, Correa and Leonidas Iza (president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador) of conspiracy. Previously, he linked the protests to destabilization.
With a faithful prosecution, all this takes on an extortionist character. This institution, in fact, summoned Iza to appear just as the national strike was starting, in late October.
Shortly before that, he opened an inquiry against Andrés Arauz (former RC presidential candidate), an active critic of offshore presidential accounts.
The pro-government narrative’s insistence on describing any oppositional action as a blockade is beginning to establish a double standard of assessment in the institutions of control.
His silence on Lasso and the Pandora Papers would reveal the extent to which the Ecuadorian right is facing the current situation by accepting the real powers and with a minimum of attention to the reconstruction of true democratic majorities.
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