President Lasso of Ecuador will appear before Parliament that is processing his vacancy

The President of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, will appear before the National Assembly (Parliament) that is processing his impeachment trial for alleged embezzlement, the Minister of Government, Henry Cucalón, said this Wednesday, noting that the ruler will ratify there “that he has not committed any wrongdoing”.

On Tuesday, with 88 votes in favor, 23 against and 5 abstentions, the Legislature approved entering the last phase of the process, where there will be a questioning of Lasso, who will be summoned to defend himself before the Chamber on an accusation of alleged embezzlement (embezzlement ) and, subsequently, his permanence in office will be voted on.

Lasso”He has not committed any embezzlement. So far there is no proof, they have not been able to demonstrate it because it does not exist”, Cucalón assured this Wednesday, noting that the political trial “legally it has neither head nor tail”.

“The position of the head of state is that, despite all this, he is going to go to the National Assembly to defend his position and demonstrate the truth”, said the minister on Ecuavisa television.

The official opined that the process against Lasso “was born, has developed and will end without any evidence, without any argument and with many vices, but the President of the Republic, despite that, owes a message to his people.”

In the Chamber, the ruler will ratify that “there is no embezzlement on the part of the president, not even in the way of omission, that there is no crime against public administration in criminal matters, in the case called Flopec“, I note.

According to the opposition, Lasso committed an alleged embezzlement by learning of alleged irregularities in a contract signed by the state company Flota Petrolera del Ecuador (Flopec) and the private firm Amazonas Tanker and not having acted to prevent further damage to the State.

Instead, the president’s defense maintains that the contracts were signed under the previous administration of former President Lenín Moreno (2017-2021) and that under Lasso’s mandate a review was requested from the Comptroller’s Office (Court of Accounts) to renew them under the conditions and observations made by that body.

Next steps

Following Tuesday’s resolution, the Assembly must convene a plenary session within five days for the impeachment trial against Lasso to be held at that instance, which coincides with the election of the new board of directors, who will direct the chamber for the next two years.

Although only 116 of the 137 assembly members were present at the plenary session on Tuesday, the votes in favor of continuing with the process were just four less than the 92 needed by the opposition to achieve its goal of removing the president, equivalent to two thirds of the assembly.

Among those in favor of prosecuting Lasso are several parliamentary groups such as the Union for Hope (Unes), related to former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017); the conservative Social Christian Party (PSC), Lasso’s former electoral partner; the Pachakutik indigenous movement and some independents.

In this way, the opposition spoke out against the report that recommended filing the process for lack of evidence against Lasso, prepared by the Oversight Commission, which last Saturday failed to approve the document and went to the plenary session of the Legislative Assembly.

Possibles scenarios

In the event that the opposition achieves sufficient votes for the removal of the president, the current vice president, Alfredo Borrero, should assume the Presidency.

Lasso already managed to save a similar situation in June 2022, when in the midst of a wave of protests led by the indigenous movement, the Assembly voted a motion to remove him due to serious local commotion, which gathered 80 votes.

Now the president has even been the one who has slipped the possibility of, having reached that limit scenario, resorting to the so-called “death cross”, a constitutional figure that allows the president to dissolve the Assembly and call early general elections to govern until then through decrees.

This possibility could generate, as various social movements have warned, an outbreak of protests by groups that claim to have been hit by Lasso’s neoliberal policies.

Source: EFE