By applying the “crucifixion” the election game was reopened. I wanted to write “democratic game”, but I think that would be too optimistic. The Constitutional Court, in rulings on the inadmissibility of lawsuits against Decree 741 by which President Guillermo Lasso dissolved the National Assembly and activated the “death by the cross” mechanism, exposes with absolute clarity: with death by the cross, the decision returns to the sovereign. and, therefore, no judge can recognize requests that mean limiting this truly democratic process (the quote is not literal).

It must be admitted that the theoretical resource of “death on the cross” seemed unpromising and, in fact, many analyzes at the international level suggested that its application would create more problems and deepen the political crisis, since it is an intense social conflict. However, this ultimately did not happen due to two factors: 1) The National Assembly was so unrepresentative that no one lifted a finger in defense of its members for even a minute. 2) All political and social actors who could be mobilized quickly devoted themselves to electoral calculation and promotion of candidacies. Even on the same Tuesday, at 8 am, after the president announced the death cross on national television, we already had at least four presidential candidates.

In the end, the temptation of power is still enormous and magnified when you have it at your fingertips, as in this case, within just six months. This shows that predictive analytics in politics can and will almost always fail when emotional factors are not taken into account.

Here we are, in the midst of a hectic election whirlwind with impossible deadlines proposed by some CNE advisers, with seven-day campaigns and other similar madness. It seems that the processes of internal democracy and gender equality have become a common bad joke, as candidates, parties and movements ignore these formalities. So the question is, is the new election game just about changing everything to change nothing? Can we think that with the same elements on the board we can get different results for the quality of our democracy?

First of all, it is evident that the current political crisis is actually a real institutional crisis, where practically all democratic institutions, such as the Assembly, the Judiciary, the State Electoral Council and the Council for Citizen Participation, have extremely low credibility. and trust of citizens. Furthermore, many of these institutions are riddled with corruption or serve illegitimate interests, including criminal ones. Will it be resolved by elections? No, although it might be a start.

But once again: can we expect different results if we add up the same numbers? Because here we continue without significant changes: there is still lack of ideas and leadership within political parties, which will probably continue to nominate people without the slightest knowledge, either for populist reasons, or because of the buying and selling of public offices.

To that should be added the fact that the electoral authority does not create trust, and during the last election process there were many complaints about fraud. It is evident that we are dealing with the State Electoral Council, which is declared incompetent to act in case of flagrant violations of the law, such as allowing the nomination of candidates with final judgments.

In this scenario, the only one who can make a difference is the citizen, as long as he does not get carried away by populist discourses and exercises his right to vote in an informed and responsible way. (OR)