The judges must decide whether to give the National Assembly a free hand to conduct the political process that could remove the president
Last Monday, Guillermo Lasso suffered personally from the political and social tensions in Ecuador. The president traveled to Alausí, an Andean community hit by a landslide that swallowed 70 people, including 60 missing, who authorities are still searching for.
Groups of angry citizens gathered outside the building where the President was meeting with local leaders, even wanting access to the President’s vehicle, forcing police intervention. The avalanche proceeded from insults on this occasion.
The incident reveals the high tension as the Conservative President faces a Constitutional Court decision that could lead to his dismissal if he has only been in charge of the country for two years. The judges must decide whether to give the National Assembly free rein to carry out the political process that is throwing them between rocks and rocks, given that the opposition has a majority in the chamber.
The judges’ transcendent decision will be known in the next few hours, but Monday’s preview, when a proposal to bury Lasso’s impeachment trial was defeated by a six-to-three vote, he suspects a majority in favor of the opponents.
Once in Parliament, 92 deputies would be enough to join his censorship, which is possible since, together with the bench of the Citizens’ Revolution commanded from abroad by former President Rafael Correa, the Social Christians, former allies of Lasso, the radicals of the indigenous Pachakutik party and the dissident Democratic Left.
However, differences have also arisen between such atypical oppositions (left-wing populists and right-wing populists), who accuse each other of seeking pacts with the governing party behind the scenes.
“The apparent political opposition only wants to destabilize democracy. It’s a very blind opposition that doesn’t want to respect the four-year electoral term. They are trying to twist the laws through a parliamentary coup‘ Lasso denounced his colleagues in the region during the Ibero-American Summit in Santo Domingo.
journalistic research
The political trial that is keeping him on the ropes emerged from a journalistic investigation by the electronic newspaper La Posta, which uncovered a corruption plot in the state sphere involving the celebrities of a brother-in-law of the president. The scandal came at the worst possible time for Lasso as Ecuador suffers an unprecedented wave of violence caused by drug trafficking. Only in the last few hours two police officers were murdered, one of them belonged to the anti-drug brigade.
If the Constitutional Court opens the hearing window and gets the necessary votes in the assembly, Lasso has only one card left to play: the death cross. It is a constitutional instrument that allows him to dissolve Parliament and call elections within months, during which he would rule by decree.
The opposition has already raised voices against the death cross, which has limits that various lawyers and constitutional experts find difficult to resolve.
“Ecuador has no future as long as Correa and his family continue to boycott any management that is not their own, any vision of the country and region that does not align with theirs,” he warned. Maria Paula RomoHead of government during the tenure of President Lenín Moreno and dissident from the ranks of the citizens’ revolution.
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