Conspiracy is in the air
More than one political analyst and/or well-informed journalist is talking about the evident intent of UNES, Social Christians and the nine dissident members of Pachakutik to take over the Assembly, appointing new authorities and destabilizing the government of President Lasso, as well.
As tweets between Assembly President Guadalupe Llori and some legislators reveal, this suspicion holds water. Also, a new majority of 70 legislators has been formed with members of the above-mentioned political groups. It is common knowledge that this bloc wants to impeach several members of Lasso’s cabinet and three members of the Council of Citizenship Participation, which recently replaced former members loyal to UNES and the Social Christians, who lost their majority in this important institution.
The CCP nominates eleven authorities from different public institutions, of which the most important are the Comptroller General, the General Attorney, and the President of the Electoral Council. The appointment of a new Comptroller to replace the former, who is currently in jail, is long overdue and was delayed by the outgoing members. UNES wants the majority to control this appointment, seeking to have a friendly appointee who would make disappear or stop investigating cases of embezzlement involving members of the Correa government, and Social Christians would be happy controlling the Electoral Council.
Even though the new majority is dangerous because it has the number of votes necessary to approve or deny any initiative of the government, it also very soon showed its volatility as its obscure objectives undermine its stability. In fact, an initiative to give amnesty to those involved in crimes committed during the riots of October 2019 is currently being discussed in the Assembly. While UNES wants a sweeping amnesty, Pachakutik and Social Christians disagree and favor a case-by-case decision. Also, apparently one legislator from Pachkutik is not supporting the idea to replace Llori and other legislative authorities. Therefore, conspiracy is in the air, but it is proving difficult to materialize given the conflict of individual interests.
While social media and the news are full of these political intrigues, as well as the natural disasters that are affecting several regions in our country and the atrocities against the environment committed by illegal mining groups, President Lasso’s trip to China, with an agenda that raised everyone’s expectations, has had too low a profile to make us happy. Little has been said by the President himself or Minister of Finance Simon Cueva about the perspectives to renegotiate the loans from China. And the Minister of Production shared optimistically that ongoing negotiations for a trade agreement with the USA are close to entering their second phase, but he said very little about the expected agreement with China.
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