The President of the Republic entrusts the Vice President of the Republic with a peace mission between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza, which will be carried out in Tel Aviv, i.e. in the enemy territory of the Palestinians, for which it is not known how he will be able to reach the Embassy of Ecuador and ask for the Vice President of Ecuador.

Any mission of this nature, be it good offices, mediation, etc., requires the acceptance of both parties; Israel accepted it, but Hamas is not known to have accepted it. The mission that the United Nations is trying to accomplish.

Verónica Abad: It’s clear, President Daniel Noboa wants me to leave

It seems like an impossible mission for the vice-president, who has not yet accepted it. The Constitution states that the person holding the office of Vice President replaces the President of the Republic in case of temporary or permanent absence: in case of temporary absence due to illness or other force majeure. That is, he must always be available, which implies that he must be in Ecuador, so that excludes him from carrying out long-term missions outside the country, which he would have to abandon if the president falls ill or something similar.

If the vice president does not accept, it turns out that the chancellor would have to perform that mission. It is becoming evident that there is a serious distance between the two first governments of the country, and it is necessary that they overcome their mutual differences because this harms the people; and do it before things get worse.

Daniel Noboa arranges for Verónica Abad to meet with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to coordinate her trip to Israel

Before peace in the Middle East, in which we can do little or nothing, we are interested in peace in Ecuador.

In the past, there have been differences between the president and the vice president, but only one with serious consequences. This happened when Vice President Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy accepted an invitation to visit the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1961, informing President José María Velasco Ibarra. Although at the same time the Vice President of the United States, Richard Nixon, visited the Soviet Union, here some right-wing political organizations considered it a sin for the Ecuadorian Vice President to do so because it would anger the US, which would not grant us loans for such an action. Then Arosemena Monroy called those who said it “mad for money,” who did not say it against the ministers of Velasquista, as it was wrongly interpreted; That’s what I told Dr. Arosemen years later. This is what produced the rift between President Velasco Ibarra and Vice President Arosemena, which, fueled by supporters of Velasco Ibarra and exploited by his opponents, culminated in the fall of the President and his replacement by Vice President Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy.

Lessons from history that the current authorities and above all their collaborators should use. Obedient, submissive colleagues, unable to give the president objective advice, cause great damage to governments. The Roman emperors had a person with them who reminded them that they were mortal. (OR)