Guillermo Lasso’s victory in Ecuador’s presidential election on 11 April is the first time in 14 years that the right-wing of the country has been voted into the presidency. The millionaire businessman won with 52.48% of the vote against the left-wing Citizens Revolution candidate Andres Arauz’s 47.6%. Lasso has unofficially governed with the US-backed outgoing President Lenin Moreno as the administration imposed austerity measures, cut public services and criminally mishandled the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, 1.87 million people in Ecuador have been thrown into poverty while the economic, social and health crises intensify. Arauz had won the first round of elections in February with a 13% lead and was the frontrunner for the second round. His loss is the result of four years of political persecution of the left at the hands of the Moreno administration and the demobilisation of indigenous voters by the Pachakutik party.
Moreno: elected for the poor, ruler for the rich
Rafael Correa was elected President of Ecuador in 2007, running on a commitment to establish ‘socialism for the 21st century’ through the Citizens Revolution project under the Alianza PAIS Party. Under Correa, public spending increased by 23% between 2006 and 2013; state spending on disability increased from $2m in 2007 to $150m in 2013; Cuban doctors worked with Ecuadorian doctors to launch medical brigades across the country; Ecuador joined ALBA and rejected IMF loans; and extreme poverty fell from 20% in 2007 to 4% in 2017. When Correa was re-elected for a second term in 2013, then-Vice President Moreno announced he was leaving politics, following rumours he had grown distant from Correa. Even as Moreno declared his exit, speculation mounted that he was planning to run for President in the 2017 election. That he did, successfully winning 51% of votes for Alianza PAIS, on a promise of continuing the Citizens Revolution.
After just a few weeks in power Moreno revealed his true colours as he set about dismantling the gains made under Correa and the Citizens Revolution. The Moreno administration held meetings with Mike Pence, who was US Vice President at the time, as Moreno realigned Ecuador with the needs of US imperialism. Moreno accepted over $6bn in IMF loans with agreed terms of making cuts to public services, privatising state industries and placing limitations on workers’ rights. He bypassed the Constitutional Court to launch a referendum that gave him executive power to add and remove the committee which oversees the selection of positions within the civil, electoral and judicial services. Speculation tax, introduced to tax the wealthiest 2% of the population on super profits from the sale of land and real estate, was removed.
By the close of 2018 Moreno had replaced the Vice President, Attorney General and 50% of his cabinet, including ministers in Foreign Affairs, Finance and Defence, with those loyal to his capitalist project. Democratically-elected council members were deposed. Leaders of the Citizens Revolution were imprisoned or illegally detained, and Correa was exiled to Belgium. Moreno collaborated with the right-wing of the National Assembly, aligned with Lasso, to appoint a Vice President of the Assembly in line with their interests. Within Moreno’s first year as president poverty increased 3% in six months and within two years Ecuador’s debt-rate was up from 40% to 55%. By 2020 his approval rating was in single figures.
Although the national leadership committee expelled Moreno from Alianza PAIS in November 2017, supporters of the Citizens Revolution were no longer able to operate under the fractured party and were forced to find new political representation. The Moreno administration’s destabilising ‘lawfare’ ran right the way up to the presidential election: Ecuador’s electoral committee (CNE) proscribed Fuerza Compromiso Social, the political party adopted by the Citizens Revolution. Correa was banned from running as Arauz’s Vice President, with the CNE even prohibiting Correa’s image, name or voice being used in any campaigning materials. The Citizens Revolution was able to overcome barriers to launch a last minute campaign under the umbrella of the ‘Union of Hope’ while other candidates running had a four-month head start.
Moreno’s legacy continues…
The election period was riddled with misinformation. The ruling class media monopoly – strengthened under Moreno – went into overdrive with lies to undermine Arauz, especially after his first-round win: that he is funded by the guerilla ELN from Colombia; that he is controlled by Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela; that he is set to ruin the economy in the pursuit of de-dollarisation. On-the-ground reporters at Ecuador on Q noted the media’s success in having voters associate the 36-year-old economist Arauz with being lazy and corrupt, and a continuation of the deeply unpopular Moreno, while billing 65-year-old conservative Lasso as the candidate for progressive change. Lasso remodeled himself along this line for the second round, adding LGBT+ and environmental issues to his campaign and he opened a TikTok account – amassing millions of views on videos posted – as part of branding himself as a politician for the youth.
Lasso is a politician neither for progressive change nor for the youth. After serving as President of the Bank of Guayaquil for 18 years, in the late 1990s Lasso took up the position of Economy Minister under corrupt President Jamil Mahuad and oversaw the financial and inflationary crisis that led to the devaluation of the national currency and adoption of the US dollar as the official currency in Ecuador. While millions of poor Ecuadorians lost all their savings, Lasso racked up tens of millions of dollars at their expense. He has been embroiled in scandals that include hoarding over $30m in shell companies in the US. Meanwhile 40% of children in Ecuador live in poverty.
…With backing from Pachakutik
Lasso’s win was helped by Pachakutik, the political arm of Ecuador’s largest indigenous organisation CONAIE. Yaku Perez ran as Pachakutik’s candidate but failed to make it past the first round. After his loss, sections of the party joined calls for a military coup to prevent Arauz from winning. A Grayzone exposé reveals how Pachakutik’s leaders have been ‘trained by the US government-funded National Democratic Institute (NDI), a CIA cutout that operates under the auspices of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)’ and supported the violent US-backed 2010 coup attempt that included sections of the police kidnapping then-President Correa.
For the April election, the party rejected an alliance with the Citizens Revolution and called for a null vote. Sections to the right in Pachakutik announced their voting intentions for Lasso, but when Jamie Vargas, one of the indigenous leaders of the 2019 uprisings, came out to support Arauz he was threatened with expulsion from CONAIE. Though more radical sections of the indigenous movements broke away to support Arauz, Pachakutik’s demand for a null vote resulted in 16.3% of votes cast on election day being void, almost 7 percentage points higher than the number in the first round of voting. Lasso won by 5 percentage points.
Lasso’s win symbolises a loss for left and progressive forces in Latin America, keeping Ecuador aligned with US imperialist interests. His electoral victory was followed by the privatisation of the Central Bank, taking Ecuador’s main financial institution out of state control and placing it in the hands of bankers. As the Ecuadorian ruling class attempts to recover from the country’s significant economic crisis, serving politicians of the Citizens Revolution, who are still the largest block in Ecuador’s National Assembly with 49 of 137 seats, will need to build with the social bases of the Citizens Revolution to ensure they are prepared to resist the coming attacks.
Ria Aibhilin
