By Juan Francisco Camino.*
In recent weeks, Ecuador has captured the attention of international media, regional politicians and, of course, social scientists, especially those dedicated to the under explored and misunderstood political science.
As part of those institutional experiments included in the Montecristi Constitution, the so-called “Cross Death” was applied by President Guillermo Lasso on 17 May 2023. This consists of the dissolution of the Ecuadorian parliament and the call for early elections of both legislators and the president and vice-president of the Republic for the remainder of the mandate, i.e. until 24 May 2025.
This is unprecedented in Latin American presidentialism, which has been characterized by being highly unstable and by generating a continuous dispute between the legislative and executive powers. Juan Linz had already warned of this some years ago, and the Ecuadorian political elite has not found the way to live in democracy, independence of powers and respect for institutions, which are manipulated according to their interests and not to guarantee peaceful coexistence. Only the political systems of Uruguay, Chile and Costa Rica could be considered exceptional in this context.
But Ecuador is a particular case, and although many compare the current situation to Peruvian political instability, the differences are notorious. On the one hand, article 134 of the Peruvian constitution establishes only the dissolution of parliament and the subsequent election of members of the house, and on the other, the dissolution of parliament in Ecuador did not mean the establishment of an emergency government or declarations outside the law. The Ecuadorian president’s actions were an institutional tool to unblock the political conflict, and this imposes limits on the actions of the president, who, although he maintains the leadership of the country’s government, his legislative capacity is limited to decrees – economic emergency laws, subject to control by the Constitutional Court (the country’s highest court of constitutional interpretation).
Although the cross-death unblocked the political conflict and was the last option for the national government to avoid impeachment in a controversial impeachment trial, it is possible that the elections will bring us a more uncertain political scenario. However, political science will have fertile ground in Ecuador to continue developing its work in order to understand our Latin American political systems.
For those on the political antipodes of the government, this measure meant the declaration of a “dictatorship”, just as you read it. They believe that the constitution endorses a coup d’état, just because the person who applied it is not part of their political organization or is close to them. On the other hand, those who approved the measure, but have not opened the constitution, have claimed that the president can reform the judicial system with a “single stroke of a pen”, or can ban political parties. Nonsense of this nature can only be an encouragement to rethink the usefulness of in-depth interviews as a data collection tool for research on this topic.
To this we add that there is no specific procedure for the Court to carry out prior control of presidential decrees. What is certain is that we can infer that there is ample room for research into how an institution, typical of the parliamentary system, has been applied in a presidentialist system, in a political system characterized by a weak democratic culture, with a tendency towards caudillismo, and with political parties that have ceased to be parties and have become “placement agencies” for candidates.
And in the process of calling for early elections, Ecuador’s political class has once again shown signs of the poor preparation of its political cadres and an absence of political careers. Some political parties and movements have shown their desperation by supporting citizens who have not been members of their organizations and who, in some cases, do not have the slightest idea of what state administration is all about.
Likewise, some candidates with little political experience, a lot of ego and little interest in avoiding a deeper atomization of our party “system” have decided to participate in these elections, looking for a party to protect them. The parties seem to have taken on the role of placing candidates, reviewing folders, the candidate’s image and, perhaps, some political or academic credentials that allow them to assume a candidacy. But the parties have failed to consider three essential elements in considering people for the executive function: understanding how the state is administered, how the political system works and how to build bridges in a country with a high degree of political fragmentation.
We are seemingly creating a new category in the study of political parties as “placement agents” for candidates. Who knows, we might add them, soon, to the typology of parties such as the “Catch All”, the “cartel” party, the mass party, or the party of elites. Or who knows, we may be facing a new definition of “electoral machines”. In short, Ecuador is a challenge for those who study politics with theoretical, conceptual, and methodological rigidity.
What is clear to all of us is that political organizations are short-sighted in the face of their almost inevitable implosion, similar to the one the country experienced in 2005 and which in 2007 led to an adventure that brought us to a hybrid regime, closer to authoritarianism than democracy, and which remained in power for 10 years.
The only thing the politicians are interested in is to survive, to drag assembly members in the parliamentary election and to satisfy their personal pretensions. They only want to see their name in the history books and not make history as responsible leaders, who seek a general agreement in their respective political tendencies and reach a governance agreement for the next two years.
No political organization considers that the next National Assembly will have a similar composition to the last one, and we will have a set of minorities vying for power in the standing committees and putting pressure on the executive. I would even go so far as to say that a greater fragmentation of the parliament awaits us, with more organizations represented trying to fill the vacuum left by political organizations that in 2021 had the advantage of the electoral pull of Yaku Pérez and Xavier Hervás and the provincial structure of the Social Christian Party.
Although the cross-death unblocked the political conflict and was the last option for the national government to avoid impeachment in a controversial impeachment trial, it is possible that the elections will bring us a more uncertain political scenario. However, political science will have fertile ground in Ecuador to continue developing its work in order to understand our Latin American political systems.
* University lecturer (Quito). PhD student at the University of Salamanca (Spain). Master’s degree in international relations from the Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales (Ecuador) and in Political Science from the University of Salamanca.
Cover image: De Verdad Digital