Correa currently resides in Belgium, his wife’s home country, and Interpol, in its attempts to stay clear of politically motivated cases, has repeatedly denied Ecuador’s requests for the issuance of a red notice against him. Ultimately, this matters little to the anti-correista alliance. While many may relish the sight of Correa in jail, even if it would most likely generate a political backlash detrimental to their interests, the guilty verdict’s true purpose is to damage Correa’s legacy, prevent him from being physically present in the country, and bar him from running in elections.
The regime’s other line of attack has been to undermine the organizational strength of correismo. The purpose is to prevent Correa and his supporters from having a coherent and functioning political party. Back in 2017, Moreno successfully stripped Correa of Alianza País, the party Correa had created in 2006 in his first successful bid for the presidency. As Correa’s former vice president, Moreno knew that in order to wage an effective campaign against Correa and his legacy, he needed to neutralize Correa’s movement. The opportunity arose when Moreno’s leadership of Alianza País was challenged by several Correa loyalists. Another favorable judicial ruling gave Moreno complete control over the party. Of course, Alianza País was correista in essence, and once its historic leader was sidelined, most of its members jumped ship. But fully aware of his transitional role, Moreno’s goal was never really to have a strong party of his own. His aim was to make the biggest political force in Ecuador party-less. This he achieved.
Correa and his supporters then sought to create a new party, but their attempts were systematically foiled by the government-controlled electoral authorities. In 2019, the correistas were eventually forced to join a preexisting political organization called Fuerza Compromiso Social. So, on July 19, 2020, Ecuador’s electoral authorities simply suspended Fuerza Compromiso Social from the register of political parties, thereby blocking it from presenting candidates to the upcoming elections. As a result, in August 2020, correistas were forced to seek the auspices of yet another party, Centro Democrático, to host the movement’s candidacies.
Correa’s enemies know that this endless journey from one party to another, with its corresponding change of name, color, symbol, list number, and awkward deals with the leadership of host parties, generates an organizational weakness that hampers the party’s capacity to dedicate its energy to the task of garnering popular support. And yet, despite these incessant attempts at eroding Correa’s room for maneuver, August 2020 polls confirmed that correismo remains a force to be reckoned with and is most likely to come in first place in the first round of the February 2021 presidential elections. If anything, the movement’s August 18 nomination of young economist Andrés Arauz as its presidential candidate has given correismo renewed momentum.
Moreno, on the other hand, faces an uncertain future. His dwindling popularity and credibility, at 8 percent, is the lowest for any president since Ecuador’s return to democratic rule in 1979. Last October, popular anger erupted against the government’s IMF-supported neoliberal austerity program, resulting in the country’s largest protests in decades. The government only barely regained control over the situation after brutally cracking down on the protests: 11 people were killed, at least 1,500 were injured, and over 1,200 were detained. A wave of arrests of opposition figures, including elected officials, followed. Several legislators sought refuge in the Mexican embassy and were flown to safety months later.
In 2020, Moreno’s dramatic mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis made global headlines when the streets of Guayaquil became littered with abandoned corpses as the city’s health care and mortuary capacities collapsed. Poverty and inequality have also been rising over the last two years. And a series of corruption scandals are creating havoc in Moreno’s government. The president himself faces accusations of having used an offshore account in Panama to receive bribes.
Moreno may be able to count on the protection of the United States once his term is up. After all, he has, in a clear effort to secure the support of the US administration, carried out a vast U-turn on many international issues: Ecuador’s exit from the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which Washington always saw as a rival to the Organization of American States (OAS) and contrary to its interests; the termination of Julian Assange’s asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy; the recognition of the US-backed Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela; a renewed program of US military and FBI cooperation, including the US training of Ecuadorian military personnel; and Ecuador’s unfaltering alignment with the Trump administration on virtually every vote at the Permanent Council of the OAS.
Having jailed and forced many members of the opposition into exile, brutally repressed protests, and barred both Correa and his political party from running in the upcoming elections, the Moreno government has crossed more than a Rubicon in the violation of essential political rights in Ecuador. So far, the local media and the United States have given Moreno carte blanche, an acquiescence that may lead Moreno to believe that he has little to gain from constraining his authoritarian slide and much to lose from allowing an increasingly likely Arauz victory come February. As a result, the rumor in political circles in Ecuador is that the government is already conjuring up a strategy to bar Arauz from running, by any means possible. Popular pressure and international scrutiny, strikingly lacking so far, will be necessary to pressure the Moreno government to desist from further harassment, and to hold a semblance of free and fair elections.
The Moreno government’s political persecution and manipulation of the election has already convinced a large segment, perhaps even a majority, of the Ecuadorian population that the elections are not free and fair. Were the government to bar or further handicap Arauz’s candidacy, people will cry fraud. Political conflict could escalate to unprecedented levels and jeopardize Ecuador’s democratic stability for the foreseeable future. This is uncharted territory. Not just anti-democratic, but also dangerous and irresponsible.
Guillaume Long is Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (cepr.net) in Washington, DC, and formerly was foreign minister for the government of Ecuador.
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Guillaume Long | Radio Free (2020-09-18T15:48:03+00:00) Moreno vs. Correa and the battle for Ecuador’s democracy. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/09/18/moreno-vs-correa-and-the-battle-for-ecuadors-democracy/
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