Ecuador: Guillermo Lasso assumes the Presidency What’s next?

After four years, this Monday, the term of the one described as the greatest traitor in the history of Ecuador concludes: Lenín Moreno. Moreno’s anti ‘correista’ cycle will close with a ceremony in which he will hand over the presidency to Guillermo Lasso, who will surely continue with Moreno’s policies, but Lasso arrives under conditions that seem not to be the most optimal to govern at ease.

The doctor in Applied Economics and director of the Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics (CELAG), Alfredo Serrano Mancilla, wrote an opinion article on the website of this institution, where he describes the possible scenario that the businessman Guillermo Lasso will have to face when assuming the presidency of Ecuador.

«If a football team wins a penalty shootout in a final, it will be the champion. However, he will never be able to boast that he won by a landslide. Any (self) deception that leads them to believe that they are far superior to the rival could be the first step to the next defeat. Extreme results cause such blindness that many times we are not able to measure our victory. Or our defeat”, he explains.

On this, he comments that, for example, the businessman and former president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, needed a second round to win in Argentina in 2015. «In the first, he only got the support of 26.7% of all the electoral register. That was the true strength of him. What was obtained in the ballot is real, but subject to a conditioned scenario».

«Confusing the first with the second – believing yourself stronger than you are – leads to serious mistakes. Neither overconfidence nor underestimation of the adversary when there has been a tie – or even won in the first instance – are good advisers. Neither in football nor in politics”, he adds.

Guillermo Lasso must choose well

In the case of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso must choose which path to take, that of governing with a superiority complex, considering himself an all-powerful president after his victory in the second round, or if, on the contrary, he modestly assumes that he won, but that it will be his turn to govern taking into account that in the first round he only obtained 13.96% of the electoral roll, equivalent to 19.74% on valid vote, and that in the Assembly, he only has 12 assembly members out of 137.

Taking one path or the other will be decisive for his future and Ecuador’s institutional stability. Four years is too long to want to rule alone or from a position of strength that he does not have. It is indisputable that holding the Executive Power will give him great muscle to manage the country in his own way, but insufficient if he wishes to launch a «one hundred percent Lasso» program. He has no choice but to seek agreements that go beyond ephemeral pacts based on a distribution of power quotas in favor of a certain political leadership.

An example is what happened for the election of positions in the Assembly, which ended with a pact between CREO, his party, and a majority of the Pachakutik leadership so that formation could occupy the Presidency. Such an agreement has a very weak foundation outside the legislative halls.

The alliance between ‘El Banquero’  (The Banker) and ‘The Indigenous Leadership’, in practice an oxymoron, will only serve to kick-start the legislative agenda. But as policies and initiatives begin to be discussed, it is very likely that the Executive will have great difficulty in achieving majorities. And what is even more important, to have the support of an ideologically very diverse Ecuadorian citizenry, but which has more than demonstrated its ability to mobilize when decisions are made against it (despite not being excessively partisan).

Lasso will have a very multifaceted opposition. Politically, he will face correísmo, with a bench of 49 assembly members and with a vote of the first round higher than his and the second not so far behind (barely four hundred thousand votes difference). If this force is dedicated to making a frontal opposition, without concessions, putting its ‘ear to the street’ and tuning in to the problems of the people, it will be an increasingly important political subject and with whom Lasso will have to dispute in a ‘democratic key’.

The opposition in Ecuador

But the political opposition will also come from other flanks: a) the indigenous movement, which goes beyond a significant percentage of its submissive leadership (there are still leaders like Leónidas Iza, who will give much to talk about, and some bases that voted null. and not in favor of Lasso); b) the old Social Christian Party, with whom he has already had the first scuffle at the beginning of the new legislative course (although they will probably come to understand each other sooner rather than later because they share almost the same ideological corpus); c) a citizen sector not affiliated with any political party, which electorally accounted for almost 30 voting points in the first round (they voted for Xavier Hervas and other candidates).

To this complex picture, we must add the economic sphere, also seen from different angles. On the one hand, in the short term, the impatience of the people to resolve an extremely delicate situation that affects wages, employment, family debt, etc. On the other hand, the pressure from the International Monetary Fund and what they call «the market» so that decisions are taken precisely against the citizens.

And finally, the difficulty that Lasso will have to reconcile his favouritism to his closest sector, the ‘financial sector’, as well as to his economic allies, above other business groups. It should not be forgotten that economic power is never monolithic. And Lenin was able to please everyone because he did not belong to any side. Lasso’s case is different.

Nothing is written. We will see if Lasso assumes that he is a ‘Weak President’ and acts accordingly, or if instead he opts to disguise himself as Superman to end up being Macri, Duque, Kuczynski or even Piñera himself. These are bad times for being a neoliberal extremist.