A woman holds a newspaper with a lasso written on it in court at the National Assembly of Ecuador this Saturday. KAREN TORO (Portal)
The National Assembly of Ecuador this Saturday adopted by 104 votes the report recommending the opening of a political trial against President Guillermo Lasso. In reality, only 70 votes were needed. In this way, the factions are beginning to consider whether or not they will have the support of the legislature in the face of possible censorship and the dismissal of the President of the Republic for the alleged crime of attacking the security of the state and the public administration.
In a heated session that lasted six hours, MPs presented their reasons for impeaching the President. The starting point was the report presented by a legislative commission investigating the alleged links of the President’s brother-in-law Danilo Carrera and his close friend Rubén Cherres to drug trafficking and a corruption network interwoven through bribery of contracts with strategic public companies such as the state oil company, telecommunications and electricity. The report’s authors accuse Lasso of encouraging the installation of this corruption structure through regulatory changes, knowing about the alleged illegal acts and not reporting them. In the judiciary, the public prosecutor’s office has also launched an investigation into this case.
But the report under discussion is not binding and has no legal value. The following procedure is that a member of the Assembly, signed by 46 other legislators, must submit the motion for impeachment in writing to the President of the Assembly, to which he must attach the wording of the charges and evidence. From this moment on, the impeachment proceedings against Lasso officially begin. The Legislative Board examines whether the conditions are met to refer the case to the Constitutional Court. This body is responsible for verifying that the types of violations that could be charged with are included in the application. If the Constitutional Court does not authorize it, the process will be archived, but if it does, it will go back to the Assembly to start the process. There, 92 yes votes are required for his dismissal.
Government minister Henry Cucalón has come out to give the executive branch position. He denounces that the report is basically “an array of patches and rectifications where they left out individuals who should be investigated,” he said, referring to the fact that the approved document mentions events involving members of Correísmo and that their names do not appear in the report, moreover, the document cites information published on Twitter by a digital medium later denied by its author and apologized for the lack of rigor in the verification process.
“The perverse attempt to invent a fable to spontaneously launch a political process against the President of the Republic is not an act of control but of obvious destabilization,” added Cucalón in a video shared on social networks. He did not say whether the president is considering the options the constitution grants him, such as imposing crucifixion, which means dissolving the assembly, a decision that also requires the approval of the constitutional court.
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