From somewhere in Mexico City, the leftist former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) ended Sunday singing victory guitar in hand, after confirming that the new brand of his political movement, Citizen revolutionwas the great winner of the local elections in Ecuador.
At the same time, in the Carondelet Palacein the heart of the old town of Quito, the current president of Ecuador, the conservative William Lassoremained silent in the face of the probable defeat that he is about to suffer in the referendum proposed by his Government to make reforms to the Constitution of 2008the one promoted by Correa.
They are the two faces of an electoral day that reflected the resurgence of correísmo by winning the prefectures and mayors of the most populated provinces and cities of Ecuadorwhose voters largely turned their backs on the Government’s proposals on security, democracy and the environment.
In elections that are seen as a barometer for the next presidential elections, scheduled for 2025, the Citizen revolutionwhose initials RC5 coincide with those of its leader, Rafael Correa, it has gone from having two prefectures in 2019 to conquering six in 2023, and a seventh still in dispute.
Correísmo has given the bell in the coastal Guayas
With almost 100% scrutiny, Correísmo has not only kept its strongholds in the provinces of pichinchawhose capital is Quito, and the coastal Manabí, but has also given the bell in the coastal Guayas, traditional stronghold of the conservative Christian Social Party (PSC)one of the great losers of these elections.
Correa’s party has also taken over the prefecture of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas and it is very close to mathematically securing Imbabura and Sucumbíos, while it is fighting vote to vote to also take over the Andean Azuay (south), whose capital is Cuenca.
RC5, in almost a third of provinces
To also achieve the prefecture of Azuay, the former president’s Citizen Revolution will govern for the period 2023-2027 about a third of the 24 provinces of Ecuador. Likewise, correísmo has won the mayoralties of some of the most important cities in the country, including the capital of Quito, Guayaquil and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas.
“We achieved the impossible: we were the Citizen Revolution again,” an exultant Correa published on social networks, who since Mexico He followed the development of the elections and the referendum, given the impossibility of reaching Ecuador, where he has a firm sentence of eight years in prison for corruption.
The former president, who has always claimed to be innocent and has denounced persecution to distance him from the political life of the country, and who since 2017 has resided in Belgiumwhere he claims to have refugee status, played the guitar and sang to celebrate: “Change, everything changes, but my love does not change no matter how far away I am.”
Lasso canceled the message to the nation
Meanwhile, Lasso had announced a message to the nation for Sunday night to comment on the electoral results, a statement that he canceled when the first partial official results of the scrutiny began to be released. He ruling partywhich has not won any provincial prefecture, had entrusted everything to the referenduma consultation with eight amendments to the Constitution, where at the moment the ‘No’ is ahead in all of them.
If these results are confirmed, the conservative Executive will suffer a serious setback
The most relevant issues focused on allowing the extradition of Ecuadorians wanted for organized crime, reducing the number of assembly members, imposing a minimum number of affiliates to political movements, and removing Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control (CPCCS) the power to appoint state authorities such as the attorney general and the comptroller.
If these results are confirmed, the Executive will suffer a serious setback, since it anticipated a comfortable victory in the referendum, according to previous polls, such as one of the pollster cedatoscarried out the day before the vote, which reflected a favorable opinion of the eight questions that ranged between 59% and 74%.
The new provincial and municipal authorities will assume their positions on May 24, when a new political scenario will open for Ecuador, with correísmo strengthened with a view to the 2025 presidential elections.
