Ecuador, a country in debt divided and afflicted by the pandemic, will elect president next Sunday and all points to a second round between conservative right and left desiring to regain power to retaliate against the ‘persecution’ of its leader Rafael. Correa.
Yesterday, the small oil country lowered the curtain for a short and limited campaign by the virus. There are 16 candidates, but none have enough support to win the first round, according to polls.
The favorites
However, the preferences in the polls lean towards former banker Guillermo Laso, 65, and Andrés Arauz, 35, Correa’s dolphin, the popular former president pulling the strings from Belgium to regain power for the nationalist left with a candidate until shortly. unknown to the majority of the population.
Between the two could emerge indigenous leader Yaku Pérez, 51, who both equally loathes and promises an environmental government that is cautious about oil and mining companies.
Chaos and crisis are the words repeated among Ecuadorians. Without popular support, President Lenín Moreno gave up the search for re-election and left the competition open to his successor.
What is at stake
Correa, who wanted to run for the vice-presidency, saw his aspiration cut short when Ecuadorian judiciary ratified him in 2020, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for corruption. He was then replaced by the journalist Carlos Rabascall.
Yet the former president is omnipresent in the campaign. Arauz himself has said that Correa will be an adviser to his government and that a series of legal proceedings against him could be reviewed.
“The possibility opens up for Correa to return to the country very easily, as the political persecution that tried to bury him would stop,” David Chávez of the public Central University told AFP.
However, he believed the correistas “would make a grave mistake in trying to further dismantle the country’s institutions by enforcing legal proceedings, pressuring people or retaliating”.
For the political scientist Esteban Nichols, of Simón Bolívar Andes University, a final victory for Arauz would mean “returning to the politics of friends and enemies”.
“The political logic will be that of a declared struggle against the political enemies being hatched in Correa’s mind,” said the professor, who found Ecuador “in a state of chaos” with “fairly disorganized public policies.”
The right
Lasso, running for the third time, seeks the presidential sash with Dr. Alfredo Borrero. A natural ally of the Christian Social Party, the most conservative in the country, is the personification of anti-correism. He backed Moreno in the referendum that overthrew the indefinite re-election of Correa’s government, labeled Arauz’s proposals “recipe failures” and offered “a change of model”.
“Those who hope that Correismo will not return as well as those who want a different policy, especially in the economic field, will vote for Lasso,” political scientist Simón Pachano of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) told AFP.
He recalled that “his status as a banker” leads to “rejection” among Ecuadorians, especially as a result of the banking crisis in the late 1990s.
“That affects him, much more when there are people who think he was one of the architects” of the deposit freeze in Ecuador, he added.
Lasso denies being responsible for that crisis, which cost the state about $ 8 billion.
Native
Amid the polarization between correístas and anticorreístas, the figure of Yaku Pérez emerged, boosted by the prominence the indigenous movement gained during the October 2019 protests against Moreno’s government.
Pérez, who has a local political career and running mate of biologist Virna Cedeño, “combines the ancient voice of the indigenous movement with that of the non-corridor left and with a range of other sectors, such as young people drawn to the speech. environmentalist, ”Pachano explained.
He also viewed the indigenous leader of the Pachakutik Party as a “surprise candidate” in these elections.
KNOWING MORE
Election details
First round.
To win in the first round, a candidate must obtain at least 40% of the valid votes and a 10-point advantage over their direct rival.
Dry law.
At midnight on Thursday, electoral silence begins to reign – so advertising and the candidates’ actions will be banned – and a dry law, which will last until 12 noon Monday.