If we do not produce globally successful soap operas in Ecuador, it is not because of a lack of capacity, but because our reality is so intriguing, and some politicians are so criminal, that they exceed the possibilities of the most perverse imagination.

These days, there have been important controversies about politicians from two groups that have a lot in common, although they try to deny it in public. On the one hand, there is the Civil Revolution party, whose leader is allegedly asking in the video to “control” the woman who threatened to accuse her former vice-president of sexual harassment. On the other hand, there is Pachakutik, whose former representative is defended by an incendiary neo-cacique who claims that rape does not happen in a relationship.

“I will not enter into anyone’s private life”, the former president of Ecuador allegedly announced on the video, after he described that the woman he needs to control had a romantic relationship with his former vice president. “I will appeal against the sentence for rape against compa Peter,” says Leonidas Iza, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie).

In the case of one of the political parties involved, I have to use adverbs obviously and allegedly because otherwise I will get a letter from a lawyer alluding to defamation and the weight of the law, but we all know what we have heard by now who . In the case of Iza, just as he has publicly harangued and pushed indigenous communities to serve as cannon fodder in protests in recent years, he will be delighted that everyone is aware of the power he has in the country and, if he could write, I’m sure he would send me a congratulatory message. .

It takes a great accumulation of human misery on the part of the perpetrator of harassment or rape to induce a woman to come forward and accuse a man. If anyone had doubts about the intentions of these two victims, I hope they lost them before the clear facts: they want to silence one and scare the other. In fact, it seems that they have already managed to sufficiently intimidate the victim of harassment.

It is very clear that women need to learn to choose their relationships, to run away from any controlling, threatening, blackmailing, self-conscious man and not at all to rely on the need to have a partner just to have one. But falling into these mistakes cannot be punished by protecting the violent and inhumane from the highest spheres of power. More importantly, voters, citizens on foot and in cars, environmentalists, revolutionaries, must absolutely condemn the proposals of any man who believes that women should be controlled.

Both parties presented themselves as great defenders of social causes and that is why they received wide support despite clear signs that it was just propaganda. I hope that the transparency with which their representatives have been expressing themselves lately will eventually demotivate at least their female fans, because that would be true justice. (OR)