Ecuador’s democracy will soon be trampled again by the unconstitutional and illegal removal of an elected president. It would be the fourth defenestration in less than three decades.

The state did not gain anything by overthrowing the constitutional order on the previous three occasions. The natives, workers and unemployed have not improved their living standards. Large and small entrepreneurs did not have better investment opportunities. The country did not get better education, better health, or better security from organized crime. The only thing that has been achieved is to divide us Ecuadorians more, even knowing that hatred does not serve to build, and resentment does not help progress.

‘The only way is to get up again’

President Guillermo Lasso had mistakes and successes, like all governments, and this newspaper highlighted them in time. But democracy is not a system that sanctions the mistakes of rulers by replacing them, because that medicine would be much worse than the disease and because democracy offers us a much more effective means of correcting the ruler’s path: voting at the polls.

The change of the president will be seriously spoiled by the unstable and stormy way in which it was prepared. The members of the assembly changed the reason for which the dismissal was allegedly justified four or five times, and it seems that even today it is not clear to them what the main reason would be. Then they misled the Constitutional Court by citing evidence that never existed. The parliamentarians also did not respect the limits set by the Court for the development of the trial.

What is gained by recalling Las?

If we illegally remove the president again, we will not have a constitutional government, but a de facto one, which is widely questioned. The image of Ecuadorian society will be tarnished before the civilized agreement of nations and we will again be described as a “banana republic”. And the economic crisis, far from recovering, will degrade to a level that is difficult to predict.

The State feels that the outcome of the trial will not depend on the evidence of the evidence. If there is a replacement, there may still be a way for the Constitutional Court to fulfill its obligation to respect the rule of law. But there is skepticism, because it does not seem that truth or justice or the highest interests of the nation will light the way, but the selfish interest of individual leaders and the distribution of power quotas between parliamentary blocs. A solid democracy cannot be built on such foundations; it would be like building a house on a swamp.

Social, economic and political uncertainty, a scenario that has been repeated throughout history in Ecuador after the “fall” of the president

This is not the legacy we are striving for for our children and future generations. Let us think, therefore, and unite our efforts so that reason prevails and the democratic course continues, before it is too late. (OR)