Anticipation of the day that inevitably comes, graduation, surgery, presidential election after the political assassination of one of the candidates, can raise the level of anxiety even in the most experienced athletes, friends of Pisces, goalkeepers who don’t move or for anything. To calm your nerves, there are those who recommend that you don’t study anything, that you don’t watch the news, that you don’t know anything. And, really, shutting down Twitter and communicating only through memes for a few days, shutting down and ignoring reality, is balsamic.

Thousands of Ecuadorians who unsuccessfully sought the August 20 vote from abroad should follow suit. Shorten the tethers and give up remote voting. Diana Atamaint will certainly appreciate it and, unless they have temporarily transferred to study in another country, they are using their right irresponsibly because they will not bear the consequences of their vote. It’s like a student voting for student council at his girlfriend’s school or where dad works.

While living in Ecuador, most migrants probably did little to practice active citizenship (using the empty seat of their municipality, proposing an ordinance, creating a user committee to monitor the public service). Why do they suddenly feel so strongly about Ecuadorians that they have to spend all day trying to use the electronic voting system? It is true that many send remittances that they spend in the country and many others are thinking about returning, but that should not affect the future of others, those who have stayed.

This much-needed electoral distance on the part of those of us who may be suffering from anxiety about the times the country is living in or those who still want to feel Ecuadorian, on the other hand, is being adopted by those who least need to. And the most emblematic cases are precisely the voters of the two candidates who made it to the second round, because, apart from their political beliefs and lack of options, they seem alienated from what one of them represents.

In the debate, González showed what was widely suspected: he has no government agenda, no ideas of his own. She invokes supposed past glories along with the “we’ve done it and we’ll do it again” axiom of faith so often that it seems she’s even trying to convince herself that voting for her list will fix our lives.

He surprised nobo, especially young people who saw the full version of the discussion live or edited on TikTok, with his technical and seemingly simple solutions to people’s real problems (economic ones). But he did so only because his voters did not bother to reveal that he was close to members of the assembly such as Marcela Holguín, whose trip to Russia he financed, members of the party formerly known as Alianza PAIS, and Lenin’s brother and cousin Moreno, with whose parties he was a candidate.

In this kind of electoral panorama, it would be better for us if the candidates were those who distance themselves from the race. (OR)