In the most crucial moments of Ecuador’s life, they are looking for those most capable of solving pressing national problems. We need leaders with a patriotic vision and commitment to our Motherland, devastated by a multitude of challenges that bring despair, frustration and anger. The country is bleeding in daily murders that show the incompetence and absence of the nation-state. What a deep sadness we Ecuadorians have that we have lost social peace and that we are faced between brothers with the inability to find agreements between dominant groups that are more like neighborly quarrels.

The reality of Ecuador’s geography, surrounded by active volcanoes, rivers that overflowed their banks, landslides that cost dozens of lives, is proof that we did not prepare enough. These attacks of nature will increase with climate change, warming seas and worsening natural phenomena. It doesn’t matter that the countries of the global south are the least polluting, our neighbors to the north have already done irreparable damage and don’t want to look for permanent solutions, and now a new El Niño phenomenon is being announced that will wreak havoc in the coastal and Sierra productive sectors, costing more lives and destroying what little infrastructure Ecuador has.

We have a society with enormous structural challenges that has millions in poverty and despair. We have not been able to innovate in a world that has reached artificial intelligence, but the current labor regulations date back to 1938. Such is the blindness that millions of Ecuadorians and their families risked their lives by migrating in unfavorable conditions because they could not find work in our Ecuador.

It is the testimony of a society that stagnates in the age of childish debates and prehistoric debates between Marxists and hardened capitalists.

The political sphere was criticized the most. Not a day goes by without a scandal breaking out, a new circus attempt to attract attention, a new accusation of corruption, a new turning point of the ridiculous, which leaves us in doubt. We need a parliament that should lead public affairs with knowledge and vision, but whose members are prisoners of their own interests and puppets of the leadership that make it impossible to find solutions for kind and gentle people. Ecuadorian society is battered, bleeding to death due to the struggle between national and international drug-trafficking gangs and the common crime that horrifies us. Our geographical destiny has placed us among neighbors who are the largest producers of cocaine in the world to supply millions of consumers in other latitudes. It costs us dearly to be a country of “transit” for those engaged in this lucrative business. We have to stop this!

Let’s put polarization aside and seek the good of all members of society. Let’s eliminate inequality and start a new path with hope for a better tomorrow. (OR)