From the outside, Ecuador has become an amorphous version of Sodom and Gomorrah. Until a few years ago, the reality looked quite different. I remember a very safe country, indeed. In that distant nation, I remember how scandalous the murder was… and then I remember how scandalous it was that someone was drugged with burundanga to rob him… and then I remember how scandalous the express kidnapping was… The truth is that although it appears that the crime has recently broken out, this has been years in the making.

Money path

For me, the first moment I saw that we had passed the point of no return was when everything that happened culminated in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of the El Comercio journalist. Six years have already passed since those moments of terror. But in order for this to happen, organized crime had to already quietly occupy a lot of ground. Metastases, actually.

Dealing with a security crisis like the one Ecuador is experiencing is not only a matter of the use of force, but also of strengthening institutions. Our country does not have strong institutions. We have many bad apples at all levels of government and, although redundant, one bad apple rots the others. As unnecessary as it may seem today, as much as it may even sound out of place, if Ecuador does not change the Montecristi constitution, it will not get out of this problem.

Overwhelmed by violence

Noboa goes with everything

Correa’s constitution, that of Montecristi, that of 300 years, is a tailor-made suit for the corruption of the institutions and powers of the state. This text creates a monster with five heads, four of which are decorative, since power is concentrated in one: Transparency and Social Control. That function, which houses the Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control – what an irony that citizen participation is a state power – appoints the Attorney General, the Comptroller and the Judicial Council, among others. That is, it determines who controls criminal and administrative investigations and who decides which republican judges will have. We Ecuadorians are fighting against it, the state that is the judge and the party.

The creation, feeding and development of this monster that we have as a country was done during the Correa government. In 11 years of presidency, with very long approval deadlines, with a tailor-made legal system, with a self-censored press, Koreanism has turned the state into a Kerber in its service – and again, with five heads. Was there peace in Correa’s time? Of course there was peace, the peace that silence and complicity give you. This huge setup could not be dismantled by a weak leader like Lenín Moreno, much less a precocious president like Lasso, or even a precocious one like the current president. To disarm this monster, we must undo its origin: the Constitution of Montecristi. Changing the Magna Carta of Ecuador must be the country’s mission, which goes beyond any good government. It is a goal that must be injected into the cultural subconscious, however antisex the idea may be.

Today, the fight against organized crime is conducted with the use of force. Tomorrow must also be with the strength of institutions. (OR)