Based on the fact that the next president of the Republic will hold office, if circumstances permit, from November 2023 to May 2025, i.e. a short period of 18 months, it is possible to assume that numerous pretenders to the presidential throne (perhaps with the exception of one of them) will try to seek re-election in the 2025 elections, since that period is not enough to see the effectiveness of the administration, especially if we become aware of the enormous challenge of leading Ecuador in these times.

Therefore, there is no comparison with the remembered performance of former interim president Clemente Yerovia Indaburu, who always claimed that he “packed his suitcase” to return to Guayaquil and leave Carondelet without longing.

The next president will do everything possible, and he has nothing against that, to be re-elected in 2025, for which he must take into account the collapse of the support of the people that the rulers of the region suffer in just one year of power, which shows that the expectations of the citizens are so high that early on they become signs of boredom and dissatisfaction. Taking the cases of leaders of other countries, it is possible to mention what is happening to Gabriel Boric, the Chilean president, who took power in March 2022; a year later his support did not reach 35%, which even led the Chilean right to an important victory in the elections for members of the Constitutional Council. What happened to the former Peruvian president Pedro Castillo is also very graphic, because after a year in power and before his dismissal, his work was not approved by about 70% of Peruvians, which is also reflected in the case of the Colombian president Gustavo Petro, who was only 10 months old in power he has a 33.80% approval rate for his administration.

I mentioned at the beginning of the article that there could be an exception to the almost certain aspiration for re-election that the next president will have, thinking in particular of the correísmo candidate, who will certainly try to pave the way for the return of former president Correo, who has already announced that he will be a presidential candidate again after the court cases fail and the 2018 referendum in which a majority of Ecuadorians said No to re-election is declared unconstitutional. However, following the logic of the other presidential candidates, it will be imperative that whoever is elected incorporates into his political calculation the reality of discouragement and dissatisfaction that exists in people these days, which in turn generates the need to satisfy the urgent social and everyday reality, something that the current government is very cost.

The next president must work hard and effectively to understand the current situation of social unrest, because that’s the only way his mandate won’t be a nightmare, and his desire for re-election a utopia. It will take more than good intentions to pull it off. (OR)