Guillermo Lasso’s professional life can be summed up in a series of promotions in the world of banking and business that made him a successful man. That made him a candidate for president, along with the politicians and managers who were popping up around the world, and affirmed the power of running the state as if it were a corporation. After two unsuccessful attempts to seize power, he succeeded for the third time in 2021, defeating the Correísmo that was at its lowest points. He inherited a highly indebted country with empty treasury. It was the banker’s hour.
However, nothing has turned out as the outlook had predicted. In just two years, he was cornered by the Ecuadorian Congress, which to this day has put him on political trial over an alleged case of embezzlement. The trial was an uncertain game that could end with his dismissal. But this 67-year-old man with a round face and square glasses grabbed the last feather he had left, he didn’t want to leave anything to chance and activated the so-called cross death. Without further ado, he ordered the dissolution of parliament and immediately called for parliamentary and presidential elections, to which he can appear himself if he wishes. Lasso left nothing to chance, which every book on entrepreneurship in times of crisis recommends.
Ecuador has been his office building for two years. officials, their employees; Ecuadorians, their shareholders. He came and assured that he knew the formula to create jobs and put the country back on the productive path. He says he did the same when he ran the Banco de Guayaquil, one of the largest in the country. Neither one nor the other happened. The country is caught in a huge security crisis that has crippled the rest of its needs. Prisons have become a gang-controlled hole where those who do not comply with the force-enforced law are beheaded and dismembered. The drug cartels have begun to control institutions and dominate part of the territory, in a similar process to countries like Mexico and Colombia.
Lasso was forced to work at age 14 to support his studies and contribute to a household of ten older siblings. He is deeply conservative in moral terms and neoliberal in economic terms; It’s two truths that he clings to as if his life depended on them. People see in him and his family the idyllic example of the elite of Guayaquil, one of the country’s most important cities, alongside Quito, the capital. Live in the Citadel, the most exclusive residential area in the city of Samborondón. Of all the candidates running in the last election, he was the one who paid the most taxes, almost $700,000 [unos 645.500 euros] Year. He raised a few eyebrows when he promised to cut taxes.
But he turned out to be very smart. The right-wing electorate was insufficient to win, having not installed a president for 20 years. Contrary to his previous ideology, he turned to the LGTBI collective and advocated the decriminalization of abortion in cases of rape. Lasso was open to listening to anyone and, the cursers said, he wanted the presidency no matter what. Nothing was impossible for him, not even changing his ideals. He arrived among the Ecuadorian business elite and remained there without a traditional surname and without a university degree hanging on the walls of his office. He is the very image of a self-made man.
During the pandemic, he led an initiative that raised funds and donated supplies to the healthcare system. More than eight million dollars were raised. This was his ideal state: private initiative came to the aid of the public with charity and good intentions. Pay less tax, of course. In February he broke his fibula and a year earlier he had surgery in the US to remove a melanoma on his lower right eyelid. He was, yes, you guessed it, operated on in private clinics. Despite contracting a urinary tract disease in April, he was taken into the hands of the military hospital in Quito. He was admitted to the intensive care unit.
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The CEO of Ecuador came with very good intentions. The country should become the sales leader in the Andean region and be listed on the stock exchange. The violence, lack of control and drug trafficking are shattering all those dreams. Reality triumphed over marketing. The final nail in his political coffin was political corruption. The opposition accused him of a crime of embezzlement for not being responsible for a deal between public oil transport company Flopec and Amazonas Tanker that cost the state six million. Impeachment proceedings hung over him. Before the guillotine fell, he clung to death on the cross. It blew everything up. The banker who promised stability and good profit and loss accounts has ended up in chaos.
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