Ecuador’s president Guillermo Lasso offered a searing critique of opposition lawmakers as his impeachment trial begun on Tuesday, with tensions in the Andean nation running high.
“You are anti-legislators,” he said in an impassioned speech from the floor of the National Assembly in Quito. “I accuse you of trying not only to take down the credibility of the presidency, but that of democracy.”
Lasso, a former banker, is facing charges in the opposition-controlled legislature of embezzlement related to contracts awarded to state-owned oil transport company Flopec. He has denied the charges and cast them as politically motivated. The contracts in question were awarded in 2018, three years before he took office.
“There was no contract or addendum signed during my term,” he said, brandishing a copy of a non-binding report from the legislative oversight committee that found no wrongdoing.
Lasso, who is struggling with health problems and needed assistance to reach the podium, accused the opposition of manufacturing a “fictitious situation”.
“The same rancour that they profess against me is the greatest proof of my innocence,” he said. “There are national laws and principles to which we owe our loyalty.”
Congress is expected to hold a vote on Lasso’s censure and impeachment at the weekend. A supermajority of 92 out of 137 lawmakers is needed to secure his removal. Lawmakers last week agreed to move ahead with a trial by a simple majority of 88 votes out of the 116 members present.
Lasso’s prospects of surviving the latest proceedings dimmed further on Sunday when congress re-elected as its president Virgilio Saquicela, an independent who supports Lasso’s impeachment. Lasso’s Creo party was left without representation on crucial oversight committees.
“Lasso’s chances were never good, but Sunday’s vote shows that it is very possible that within five days he will be censured and impeached,” said Sofía Cordero, a Quito-based political scientist at the Observatory for Political Reforms in Latin America.
Despite receiving plaudits for Ecuador’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign and a debt restructuring deal with China, Lasso has struggled to govern since taking office two years ago, unable to overcome a hostile congress and failing to contain a rise in drug-related violence.
Lasso said on Tuesday that the impeachment process was limiting the government’s ability to fight crime. Ecuador, once one of the region’s safest countries, has a murder rate comparable to that of Mexico.
He could survive impeachment this week, though analysts say he would be rendered a lame duck with an emboldened opposition in congress.
“None of the options available are good,” Cordero said. “They all bring instability, uncertainty and ungovernability.”
At any point before removal, Lasso could dissolve congress and trigger presidential and legislative elections under the so-called mutual death clause in Ecuador’s constitution. In that scenario, he would govern by decree — overseen by the constitutional court — for six months while elections take place.
Lasso told the Financial Times last month that he would activate the clause if congress moved to oust him. But opposition lawmakers, as well as Saquicela, have said that such a move would be challenged by congress.
Hundreds of the president’s supporters gathered in front of the legislature on Tuesday morning. “Lasso, the people are with you,” they chanted as he arrived.
“I’ve come to personally defend democracy,” he told them before entering the building alongside his cabinet.
María José Rosas, who works in communications, turned out with a group of friends. “We are here to show support for a president who is facing political persecution,” she said.
On the other side of the building, a group of opponents chanted “Lasso out!”
The coalition to impeach Lasso crosses ideological boundaries. The leftist Union For Hope party — led by former president Rafael Correa, who is living in Belgium to avoid being imprisoned for corruption — has pledged its 47 votes to remove Lasso. The rightwing Social Christian party also supports impeachment.
The indigenous Pachakutik party could prove decisive. It split last week on whether to continue with Lasso’s trial, though on Sunday largely supported the re-election of Saquicela as well as other supporters of impeachment to important posts.
Amid the uncertainty in congress, indigenous leaders have threatened to call for a resumption of protests that paralysed the country last June.
“If the government makes the wrong decisions and provokes a social reaction . . . we will declare a national mobilisation,” said Leonidas Iza, the anti-capitalist leader of the powerful Conaie indigenous federation that led the protests. “We are going to be standing by.”
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