Closing of the Congress in Ecuador: the indigenous movement speaks of a “dictatorial scenario”

The powerful Ecuadorian indigenous movement rejected on Wednesday the decision of the country’s president, Guillermo Lasso, to dissolve the National Assembly (Parliament), and warned that the fact draw “a scenario of dictatorship”a day after that legislature launched an impeachment trial against the president for alleged corruption,

“Faced with the serious political situation in the country and the scenario of the dictatorship of Guillermo Lasso, we ask the peoples and nationalities to maintain unity in every organizational structure at the national level, an extended extraordinary council will be convened in the next few hours for the analysis and collective decision-making,” says a tweet from the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE),

The movement, which will convene an extraordinary enlarged council to analyze the situation, had already made public its position of rejection of this option taken by Lasso, even though in one of its latest statements to the press it recalled that he didn’t think of going out to protest in the streets.

“A Cowardly Coup”

“Lacking the votes needed to save himself from his imminent removal, Lasso gives a cowardly coup with the help of the police and the armed forces, without the support of the citizens, becoming an imminent dictatorship”, said the political leader of the movement, Leónidas Iza.

La Conaie and its political wing Pachakutik (PK) represent the social movement with the greatest mobilization capacity in Ecuador and proved to be the protagonist of some of the key political moments in the country’s modern history, such as the riots of October 2019 and December 2021.

In 1990 it became the calling force for a massive indigenous uprising that paralyzed the country and this has catapulted the organization to become the most powerful and authoritative spokesperson for indigenous peoples and nationalities in the country.

Since then, various national mobilizations and strikes have been called or led by this mother entity of the indigenous movement which strongly opposed adjustment policies neoliberal structure in the 1990s and early years of the new century.

With the arrival of the government of Rafael Correa (2007-2017), the group was the center of articulation of a left-wing opposition to the Ecuadorian version of progressivism, especially on agrarian, environmental, water-related and resistance issues to extractivism.

Closure of the Congress

Lasso dissolved Congress at dawn on Wednesday when the opposition cornered him with a political trial, in which he was accused of corruption.

In particular, he was accused of failing to intervene to prevent or denounce a corruption structure in the contract for the transport of crude oil abroad between the state company Flota Petrolera Ecuatoriana and the Amazonas Tankers company, which allegedly caused millions of damages to the state. .

In the event of enough votes to avoid impeachment, Lasso used a constitutional mechanism that allows him to shut down Congress and call elections.

Ecuadorian Armed Forces approved the president’s decision and warned that they will act “firmly” in the face of any disturbance to public order.

In a video released by the Ministry of Defense, Ecuador’s top military leader, General Nelson Proaño, said that the Armed Forces and the National Police “will maintain their position of absolute respect for the Constitution and unalterable laws”.

Agencies