Ecuador: President dissolves congress to avoid impeachment
Guillermo Lasso has announced the move just a day after the hearing started.
On Wednesday 17th, President Guillermo Lasso dissolved the National Assembly, Ecuador’s main legislative body. This comes a day after representatives launched an impeachment process against Lasso, on accusations of corruption. The president will be able to rule by decree until elections are held, at a date in the next 90 days. In Ecuador, legislative and executive bodies can dissolve each other once every three years, as per the constitution.
The president attempted to defend himself at the debate on May 16th, though likely seeing the balance of forces at the assembly he cut the discussion short the following day. The president is accused of embezzlement, by not cancelling a public contract which could be deliberately overpaying Amazonas Tankers, a private business, hurting the finances of state-owned Flopec.
While Lasso won the presidential elections, his political party is only the third-largest in the National Assembly. The opposition group, founded by former president Rafael Correa, occupies the most seats, though without reaching an absolute majority. A successful impeachment could put the president in prison, and open the door for Correa to return to national politics.
The move resembles that of former Peruvian president Pedro Castillo, who attempted to stop his own impeachment. However, the armed and security forces turned against him, whereas in Ecuador the top brass have come out in support of their commander-in-chief. The critical difference is that while Castillo was an anti-establishment figure, disliked and demonised by Lima’s elite, Lasso is a former banker and executive trusted by Ecuador’s ruling class.
Ecuador has experienced significant economic, societal and political degradation since the COVID-19 pandemic. This has given the opposition confidence to push through with impeachment, and run at the subsequent presidential race. The virus was notoriously deadly by the region’s standards, while the economy is yet to recover. Furthermore, strategic areas such as the port of Guayaquil are becoming increasingly controlled by drug cartels and turning into violent hotspots. The country itself is becoming one of the most dangerous in Latin America, a region already infamous for violent crime. In 2022, homicides increased by 83% to 4603 from the previous year.
Already in 2019, Ecuador’s economy was under duress. An important primary sector producer and OPEC member, Ecuador rose and fell with the 2010s “commodities boom”. Lasso’s predecessor attempted an emergency deal with the IMF, meeting staunch resistance from mass protests. As we reported in March, Ecuadorians have become the largest demographic of migrants crossing the Darien Jungle, a key choke point in the route towards the United States. Crisis-struck Haiti and Venezuela are the next two main origin points for migrants in Darien.