The elected President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, this Thursday in Quito.José Jácome (EFE)
Since election day, nothing had broken the silence of Ecuador’s new president, Daniel Noboa. Nor is the energy crisis, which has led to power outages lasting two to four hours a day across the country and millions in economic losses. Nor the hot spots of violence that are flaring up in the Guayaquil prison. Nor the budget shortfall that the government will receive. No opinion was heard for more than 15 days until Rafael Correa intended to make negotiations with other factions in the Assembly conditional on the impeachment of Attorney General Diana Salazar. “There are some principles that are non-negotiable,” the president said this week from the United States, one of the countries where he stopped after his trip to Europe. There he made it clear that he would not support a trial against the public prosecutor: “We have to protect people like them.”
Correa responded on social network “Is it that difficult?” he added. Noboa did not follow the thread of the discussion. The Citizen Revolution Bench’s intention is to bench the prosecutor who brought Correa to trial, where he was sentenced to eight years in prison for a bribery case in which he also lost his political rights. Correa believes this represents persecution against him and his closest officials.
The letter dismissing the prosecutor shook the political hornet’s nest in Ecuador, which remained in inertia after the election and revealed the scenarios in which Daniel Noboa will rule for the next 18 months. The first front is the legislature, where the president does not have a majority. The PID-Mover alliance with which she took part in the elections only achieved 14 MPs. The weight of the assembly lies on the bench of the Citizens’ Revolution, of Correa and the PSC, which, although they have different ideological tendencies, have governed together in the assembly. The opposition front will be in the hands of Construye, the party that included presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, assassinated in Quito before the vote, and which represents the second force in Congress.
“It will not be easy for Noboa to pass a bill,” explains political analyst Santiago Basabe. “There is a lot of dispersion and atomization in the Assembly, there always has been, but in recent years the partisan rules have been designed to make it work that way,” he adds. Given the little time he will have in Carondelet, the president must, according to Basabe, “dedicate as little time as possible to governing and creating tension.”
The country does not need the assembly for several priority issues, such as the security of citizens. “What is needed is a decision in the executive and in the ministries to implement the budgets, and for that you need a minister who is ready to do that,” explains the analyst. Ecuadorian police predict they will end this year with a rate of 40 murders per 100,000 residents, the highest in their history, making the country one of the most violent in the world.
Priorities include providing medicines and medical supplies to hospitals, addressing education and all the social problems left by politics and insecurity. The other front that can influence the Noboa government is the war between other functions of the state such as the Citizen Participation Council, which appoints the main authorities, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Judicial Council, which administers the judiciary, and the Court of Justice, which appoints the main authorities other functions conflict.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
Subscribe to
“Perhaps the biggest threat to the president comes from his own mistakes – which I hope he doesn’t make – rather than from outside agents,” says Basabe, such as the fact that he has not appointed a speaker, “he doesn’t speak and he does neither.” I also have someone who speaks for him.” . The appointment of his cabinet has already provoked initial criticism. Noboa has named only nine ministers out of the 35 appointments he needs to make to form his cabinet, not counting other officials in public companies and diplomats. The profile is similar to his, young people under 40 without much experience in politics or public service. “They’re doing this ant job to appoint a cabinet, and that’s also the problem when it doesn’t have a base party, it doesn’t have its own structure,” says Ariana Tanca, a political scientist.
“It seems to me that he is running into the same problem as Guillermo Lasso again by appointing a cabinet of business elites. “The people of Ecuador are no longer used to their ministers being elite, they are used to seeing ministers from the middle class, and I see this as another weakness of the government,” adds Basabe.
If Noboa wants to finish his term and run for a second term amid Ecuador’s government minefield, he will need to consolidate his political capital in the people who support him on the streets. But the strategy of silence that he has pursued so far can work against him, believes Arianna Tanca, because it can create uncertainty and “in politics all spaces are occupied”. “When this narrative becomes established that he is not talking about what is happening in the country, political myths arise that he is not prepared or does not know what to do. In the long term, this may reduce its popularity and the honey moon period will expire more quickly.”
As Noboa navigates the complex scenarios that lie before him, Carondelet Palace seamstress Rosa Muñoz has already taken the measurements to make the president’s sash. Now all we have to do is coordinate an atypical possession, which for the first time will take place not on May 24th, but possibly on November 23rd
Follow all international information on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.