Lasso vs. Congress: a constant disagreement that could end with the departure of the president of Ecuador (and the legislators)

Guillermo Lasso has barely five months in the presidency of Ecuador, and the winds of vacancy and closure of the National Assembly (or Congress) are already blowing, and with increasing force in the neighboring country.

The right-wing president is juggling to maneuver governance in the face of an adverse Congress, the increase in the price of fuel, prison riots, drug trafficking and a blow to his image after the denunciation of the Pandora Papers and the participation of his companies in tax havens.

A mix to which is added the discontent in the street, which is already starting to ignite with calls for mobilizations, in the midst of a state of exception that the president has imposed to fight organized crime.

And to complicate the picture, the gap between the Legislative and the Executive continues to open. On Wednesday, the president decided not to attend the summons of a parliamentary commission investigating Pandora Papers and their involvement in off-shore companies, something that is punishable by law. Congress has cited him, on a mandatory basis, for Friday and it remains to be seen if, finally, the president ends up yielding or continues to challenge the National Assembly, in which his parliamentary group (CREO) it has only 13 of the 137 members of the Legislative.

How is President Lasso going to weather this coming wave? Are the conditions in place for your political enemies to remove you from power?

These days there has been more and more talk about the possibility of the president decreeing the crossed death, a figure that contemplates the Constitution and that implies the closing of the National Assembly and a new call for elections. The risk is that Lasso might not be elected. That is, there would be other congressmen, but also, a new president.

“The distance between the Executive and the Legislature widened after the National Assembly bounced back to the president his megaproject Creating Opportunities, which includes a tax and labor reform. Shortly after taking office he had sent a new communication law, which was also returned to him ”, Ecuadorian analyst Sebastián Mantilla, director of the Latin American Center for Political Studies, comments to El Comercio.

For Mauricio Alarcón, executive director of the Citizenship and Development Foundation, it was clear to the government that the road would be difficult given the result of the elections: “When Lasso won the presidency, he was clear that he would not have governability in the National Assembly. Only 13 of 137 legislators are part of its organization, that is, not even 10% to properly constitute a caucus; so the panorama is not new, they were clear about it ”.

A fragile alliance

Mantilla recalls that the disagreement between the president and the legislature occurred even before reaching the presidency. With so few congressmen, it was imperative to form alliances. The first option was to join the Correísmo and the Social Christian Party, but Lasso did not accept because he considered that allying with the followers of the former president could damage his image.

“Correísmo made it a condition to review the issue of the trials of former president Rafael Correa and other former officials of that government, that is, there was an attempt to take justice to tear down the processes for corruption. Lasso thought that this alliance could take away his legitimacy and decided not to, which was correct. But the problem was that in order to decide authorities in the National Assembly – such as dividing the commissions and presidencies – he had to resort to a fragile alliance with independents, the Pachakutik movement and the democratic Left “, he comments.

However, it was a very forced alliance. Lasso, a right-wing liberal in favor of the free market, now had as allies the political arm of the indigenous movement and the center-left. It was not very difficult to predict that such a coalition would end badly.

For Alarcón, the political blockade of which the Executive speaks forms more of a narrative than of reality. “The national government has positioned a narrative of power struggle, a message of political blockade on the part of the National Assembly to justify to some extent the fact that the bills that had been offered were not sent on time, as well as other clerical errors. The point is that so far we are not clear about what the Executive wants to do in economic, tax, labor or security matters “, he points out.

“There are grounds to establish the dissolution of the national assembly, but so far none of them is configured as to enable Lasso now an eventual dissolution of the legislative body”, adds Alarcón.

To this, analysts add the lack of political strategy of the president, who knew that he entered to rule with allies who could turn to him.

“These groups began to distance themselves basically because of their ideological differences. And they have not been consistent with the alliance that was formed. But not only that. Lasso does not have a political operator, a link between the Executive and the Assembly who knows how to negotiate “, expresses Mantilla.

For Alarcón, “Lasso’s mistake is not having a political strategy, and despite saying that he has been preparing for this for ten years, improvisation is leading him to make mistakes that affect the entire country.”

Will it reach the year of government?

Under this scenario, is Lasso’s departure from the presidency increasingly possible?

Mantilla considers that in the short term there will be a worsening of the crisis: “There could be two scenarios: that the investigation into the Pandora Papers advances and a possible trial of the president with the option of his being removed from office; and that the president decree the death of the cross if he continues to send bills to the Assembly and it is not accepted ”.

The analyst adds that, beyond the tense relationship between the Executive and Legislature, it is important to see the general context in the country: with fuel prices that continue to rise, the pressure for more mobilizations and the possible paralysis of roads for purposes October. “Social pressure will come from the streets to put the government against the wall and bend its wrist ”.

And here he also enters to carve the correísmo, which had previously succeeded in dividing the influential indigenous movement but is now reaching out to many of its leaders in order to fuel protests. “The main objective of correísmo is to undo all the trials that exist against Correa and his former officials, and control justice”, says Mantilla.

And Alarcón adds: “Correísmo’s strategy is perverse, because those who previously destroyed the institutions, violated the rule of law and ignored their own Constitution, today present themselves before the country as the great defenders of the Constitution and democracy, hoping that the government will stumble into their own mistakes to capitalize politically ”.

The option for Lasso is to know how to weather the storm. For now, this Thursday he met with the leadership of Pachakutik to reach agreements. Mantilla makes a precise simile with football: “It depends a lot on your ability to maneuver. The problem is that it has no political operators. He lacks a good number 10, someone to set up the midfield and score the goals. If not, he could lose the game. “