In exercising the authority granted to him by Article 148 of the Constitution, the President of the Republic dissolved the National Assembly for one of two reasons for which he does not need the prior approval of the Constitutional Court.

In typical Ecuadorian politics, the Civil Revolution said that what the president had done was “illegal” but that they were going to the elections. In other words, the Civil Revolution legitimized the president’s actions. Another party surveyed, Social Cristiano, which does not want elections because it is at its worst moment in decades, argued that the measure was illegal.

That is, for all actors, the electoral and party interest is always above the interest of the country.

The president was backed into a corner, and those who are protesting against that decision today lacked the ability to analyze and logic the most. As much as the president didn’t want to do it, if he was backed into a corner, he would do it. And so it happened. The assembly was dissolved.

The Constitutional Court, on the other hand, washed its face. He brought the country to the brink of chaos, recognizing a trial that had neither head nor tail, with a bombastic legal explanation that could not hide the “political adaptation” of the decision. The speed with which he acted on this occasion prevented tempers from escalating and the country from entering into what suits it least, namely political confrontations and swelling of passions.

The inevitable action taken leads to new elections, which will be held between August and October, producing a new president shortly before the end of this year, leaving around 18 months of clear transitional government.

The big question is whether there will be room in that transitional government to address the gigantic underlying structural problems that urgently need to be addressed, such as subsidies, interest rates, social security, labor legislation, education reform, government fat-cutting, lack of investment, support for large-scale mining. scale? The answer is clear: there will be no such space. Whoever wins will try to blame everything on the previous government, be as populist as possible, in order to secure re-election.

And of course, the current president, in the middle of the election process, will not even touch these serious structural problems.

During this process, between an outgoing government that has little room for maneuver and a transitional government that will succeed it, the economy will deteriorate, fundamental problems will continue to eat away at Ecuador’s economic structure, and the difficulties for the country will continue to deepen. It can move forward These untouched problems it will bring us closer to the fiscal mega-crisis that this country is preparing, in which the state will be left without the ability to pay, and which can lead to unforeseen consequences, not only economic, but also social and political.

Today, looking back on the facts, I think it can be concluded that the dissolution of the Assembly should have happened much earlier, because it is not possible to rule the scientifically, emotionally and politically structured Legislative Assembly in order to achieve the destruction of the Executive.

The only thing that is certain is that today everything is more uncertain, that uncertainty never helps the economy, that the country sees the possibility of a real takeoff towards progress and development.

It is true that presidents generally make mistakes. That the Executive Power commits grave political sins, yes. But the fact that the growing mediocrity of congregations and their ability to blackmail is unbearable is also a reality. Whoever writes this column has suffered first hand.

The 1992 Assembly forced the executive into what political analysts called a “collective agreement.” These were extra-budgetary items for specific works, items that went to the municipalities of the parties that “supported” the Executive Power’s bills, and which were essential for modernization and moving the country forward.

When I as the Vice President realized the corruption involved in these acts, and began to accuse the country with evidence, the response of the Assembly was clear: use your political control of justice to initiate an unfair criminal trial against me, and then a political trial in the Assembly. Start a campaign against the vice president. It took me and my family 20 years of exile, and tell me, dear readers, whether the assemblies and political practice have improved. Certainly not. Who today doubts that my accusations were true?

The parties are unable to make transparent agreements to share power in a decent manner. They ask for things under the table and are almost always corrupt, and this reality makes Ecuador increasingly ungovernable.

We will see what this road opened by the dissolution of the Assembly brings us, but certainly Ecuador shows once again that it is difficult to believe in its future sustainability. (OR)