After Glas’ arrest, Rafael Correa’s party breaks the government pact with Noboa in Ecuador

The arrest of former vice president Jorge Glas, holed up in the Mexican embassy in Quito, risks breaking the governability pact that supported the government of president Daniel Noboa. After the capture of Glas, Rafael Correa’s party has already positioned itself in the harshest opposition to the ruling party and even called for the president’s resignation.

“Noboa has clearly demonstrated this “He doesn’t have the ability to govern.”said Luisa González, top leader of the Revolución Ciudadana, the space that led her to run for president (she lost to Noboa) and which has Correa and Glas among its references. “We ask that he submit his resignation from office,” he added at a press conference in Quito on Saturday, a few hours after the police operation raided the Mexican diplomatic headquarters in Ecuador, a move that was condemned by countries of the region.

The current president “is not qualified to lead this country” and “is putting all citizens at risk”, especially Ecuadorian migrants who are in Mexican territory and trying to reach the United States, and who need the necessary consular assistance, Gonzalez added.

“Ecuador does not deserve” a situation like the current one, with such a huge “diplomatic problem”, added the president of the Revolución Ciudadana after insisting on her request to Noboa: “Submit your resignation, Ecuador It’s not your banana farm.”

In turn, Belt He assured that “the damage to the country’s reputation is immense, I believe irreparable in the short term”.

Regarding Noboa, he stated that the most likely hypothesis explaining this episode – which resulted in the breakdown of relations between Mexico and Ecuador – is the “clumsiness” and “vanity” of the Ecuadorian president.

Correa described him as “a very immature boy who was born in a golden cradleraised in a bubble, no longer made of silver, but of diamonds, and who does not know reality”, because he considered it “capricious, presumptuous, bad… and now we have ratified it”.

And he underlined that Citizen Revolution will not support the Noboa government again.

“He is a very self-centered guy who doesn’t like to lose, used to winning because millions bought everything and believed why a country would be run like a banana farm (…) He dares to do what he had never done before. He is story happened: raid on an embassy and kidnapping of an asylum seeker”, he reiterated regarding the president, in dialogue with EFE.

Disadvantage in the Assembly and opposition pressure: Noboa faces the threat of a governance crisis

Through the Citizens’ Revolution, Correismo controls 51 of the 139 seats in Ecuador’s National Assembly. Despite the ideological differences, there was a tacit governability pact with Acción Democrástica Nacional (25), the coalition with which Noboa came to government.

Through this agreement, in which the Social Christian Party (17) and some minority groups also participated, the President secured the majority (92 seats) to approve a series of economic projects that he considers urgent in the first part of 2024.

Now, with the scandalous arrest of Glas, that floor has been shattered, the laws risk not becoming reality and the Noboa government is entering a crisis.

The vice-president of the National Assembly and spokesperson of the Correismo parliamentary group, Viviana Veloz, had the task of recalling that so far Correismo has supported some legal projects of the Executive in favor of the governability of the country, but stated that after the latest events Citizen The revolution declares itself in open opposition to the Noboa regime.

“We will not be complicit in a model of authoritarian and dictatorial government– underlined Veloz.

The legislator has announced that it will be required that a impeachment proceedings of censorship against some ministers of the Noboa government: Chancellor Gabriela Sommerfeld, the Minister of Government and the Interior, Mónica Palencia, and the head of Defense, Gian Carlo Loffredo, who they indicate as responsible for the raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito.

Veloz said these ministers could be prosecuted in the Legislature for “inability, negligence and irresponsibility” in the performance of their duties, which will be supervised by their parliamentary group.