Rafael Correa: “I can’t run as a candidate, but my movement will win these elections in Ecuador”

In the context of a political trial that threatened to oust him, the president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, resorted to the so-called “cross death” arguing the state of unrest in the country.

This legal figure allows the Executive and the Legislative to dissolve each other and to call elections in advance. It is a mechanism established in Ecuador by the 2008 Constitution and, moreover, it is first time that an Ecuadorian president resort to this measure.

In the midst of the political crisis, RFI spoke with President Rafael Correa, who has lived in Belgium since the end of his mandate in 2017, and has been sentenced in Ecuador to eight years in prison for corruption.

-What do you think of the “crossed death” decree signed by President Lasso?

-Look, I think it’s the best thing for the country, given the crisis we’re experiencing, but not a crisis of internal emotion but the moral, ethical crisis, the disaster that this government is, the democratic fraud that has turned out to be Lasso who arrived full of lies and showed total ineptitude. Unfortunately it is not constitutional. He has the expertise to do it. You said it, article 148 establishes it, in the 2008 Constitution – we made that Constitution – but with three causes. Lasso invokes the inner emotion that does not exist in this moment. The Constitutional Court even has two sentences which describe the characteristics of the internal turmoil and which in this case are not fulfilled.

Why do you think you did it?

-It is evident that what he has done is to try to avoid the censure that he would have had in the ongoing political process. And this is another factor of unconstitutionality of the decree, because it interrupts an ongoing procedure which is the political process, also contemplated by the Constitution of the Republic.

-So it’s not right to hold early elections?

-For me, I said it, it’s the best. But you have to distinguish between what is good and what is correct. The good thing is to bring forward the elections and then we have a democratic, peaceful, global solution with presidential and legislative elections, but outside the Constitution. The right thing to do is to reject that decree as unconstitutional and continue with the political process in the Assembly.

“The right thing to do is to reject that decree as unconstitutional and continue with the political process in the Assembly.”

-Ecuadorians are at the gates of an electoral period, that is, a legislative and presidential campaign whose first round will be held quickly in 90 days. Will your Citizen Revolution movement participate in this election? And you could be a candidate?

I can’t be a candidate. My political rights were suspended – first for 25 years, then for eight years – for a false sentence in the midst of a pandemic, days before I registered. It was an obvious political persecution. Believe it or not, the sentence says that through psychic influence I managed a criminal organization dedicated to corruption. Through psychic influence! It’s amazing, ridiculous all over the world. Obviously my movement will participate and I believe that God willing and thanks to the Ecuadorian people we will win those elections.

-You said it a few months ago: in 2025, which is the time when the elections should take place, surely you would have won.

-In any case, the elections will have to be by 2025, because the anticipation of the elections establishes that the period for which the original government was elected will be completed. That is to say, if there are elections in 2023 it will be until 2025 and then the normal period of government will resume.

–President di Lasso says he made the decision to dissolve the National Assembly because the legislator had “a macabre plan to take control of state institutions and accelerate Rafael Correa’s return to Ecuador.”

-Imagine, “The Assembly has macabre plans.” And those are the ones who call themselves Democrats! Look, first we have to see which version of Lasso we believe in, because on Tuesday, when he went to defend himself in the Assembly, he made a complaint to the nation. There was no defense, he couldn’t deny any of the evidence, but he wanted us to believe that we were in ‘Wonderland’ and that he was ‘Alice’. And that everything was fine and stable. For the next day, after he said a week ago that he would never call a “cross death” to avoid impeachment and that he would show his face, he would call a snap election arguing an internal social commotion that there is no And. To then, that same afternoon, tell A that it’s not true that there is internal unrest in the country, but that the problem is that they wanted to bring Correa back. And that he wants to bring forward the elections to avoid the macabre plan.

So first of all, he’s okay with himself that he lies every day. What is the truth? Che Lasso wanted to avoid censorship in the impeachment trial. And that all his lies will soon collapse, including the persecution against political leaders, including myself. And, of course, we don’t have to apologize to anyone if a political process is constitutionally required so that absolutely spurious authorities are held politically accountable before the courts. In 2018, with a coup d’état, they took over all the institutions of the state, putting the worst ones in place as long as they persecuted “correísmo”, as they call it. Because who are we to blame? What do we have to ask permission for what?

– In the meantime, Lasso will remain in office for a maximum of six months and will be able to issue urgent laws and decrees of an economic nature. It’s already started with it. There has been a tax reform approved by presidential decree. What can happen in this scenario where economic measures begin to be decreed for the exception of the period we are experiencing?

-He will have six months to govern by decree, without Legislative, without control, without counterweight. And, well, we expect anything. They have done worse. Lasso is one of the richest kids in the country and the first thing he did was eliminate the estate tax. The economy is destroyed, but the banks are breaking profit records, even the expectations they had for profits, all based on their private activities and in a shameless way. You said it, yesterday they announced that they will present a labor reform to return to labor exploitation, which is called “labor flexibility”. We’ll have to endure.

-What do you think will happen in these months?

-The great hope is that in six months everything will end when the new government takes office, which normally -if they don’t cheat and they are fair elections- we will win those elections and will have to give political and legal accountability for so many abuses. And, of course, all the abuses they committed will be repealed.

B. C