Sectional elections in Ecuador: The return of Correaism and the rejection of an absent State

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By Juan Fran­cisco Camino*

The elec­tions of lo­cal gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties (may­ors, coun­cilors, coun­cil mem­bers, among oth­ers), of coun­cilors of the Coun­cil of Cit­i­zen Par­tic­i­pa­tion and So­cial Con­trol, and the ref­er­en­dum pro­posed by the Ecuado­rian gov­ern­ment, held on Feb­ru­ary 5, 2023, not only rep­re­sent a heavy de­feat for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Guillermo Lasso and for the cen­ter-right, to which he be­longs. They have also given a very clear mes­sage to the en­tire po­lit­i­cal class of Ecuador about what cit­i­zens ex­pect from the State.

Al­though the elec­toral re­sult must be an­a­lyzed ac­cord­ing to the par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of each province and city of Ecuador, it is clear that the only win­ner of the day is the Movimiento Rev­olu­ción Ciu­dadana (Cit­i­zen Rev­o­lu­tion Move­ment), of for­mer pres­i­dent Rafael Cor­rea. At the lo­cal level, this po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion reached 10 out of 24 pre­fec­tures (provin­cial gov­ern­ments), 61 out of 240 may­oral­ties (mu­nic­i­pal gov­ern­ments) and po­si­tioned it­self against the ref­er­en­dum, be­ing this op­tion the win­ner in the 8 ques­tions for­mu­lated by the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Guillermo Lasso.

In sym­bolic terms, “Cor­reism” achieved a vic­tory that it did not achieve even when it was in gov­ern­ment: it ob­tained the pre­fec­tures of the 4 provinces with the largest pop­u­la­tion in the coun­try (Pich­in­cha, Azuay, Guayas and Man­abí), re­turned to the mu­nic­i­pal­ity of Quito af­ter 10 years and took con­trol of the mu­nic­i­pal­ity of Guayaquil (the most im­por­tant port of Ecuador) from the So­cial Chris­t­ian Party, af­ter 31 years of lo­cal gov­ern­ment. De­spite ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion, and sen­tences served in prison by some of Cor­rea’s ex­coidear­ios, this po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion reached the sec­ond pres­i­den­tial round in 2021, is the first mi­nor­ity in the par­lia­ment and is the first po­lit­i­cal force at the lo­cal level. Let’s re­mem­ber that the for­mer pres­i­dent un­der­went the elec­toral cam­paign from Bel­gium and the ju­di­cial sen­tence against him sus­pended his po­lit­i­cal rights for 25 years. Nev­er­the­less, he was a key fig­ure for the suc­cess of his can­di­dates.

The re­sults also al­low us to af­firm that, on the side of the ex­ec­u­tive, one of the most im­por­tant rea­sons for its de­feat has been the ab­sence of the State. In two years of gov­ern­ment, the Ecuado­rian state has shown it­self in­ca­pable of pro­vid­ing ba­sic pub­lic ser­vices to cit­i­zens, which has trans­lated into prob­lems of in­se­cu­rity, lack of ac­cess to med­i­cines, abuses in la­bor re­la­tions and ed­u­ca­tional in­fra­struc­ture. In­se­cu­rity, for ex­am­ple, has left about 413 fa­tal­i­ties in prison mas­sacres and 4,603 deaths as a re­sult of vi­o­lent deaths in 2022. For cit­i­zens, this is the most im­por­tant prob­lem, and it is ev­i­dent that the State has been un­able to pro­vide so­lu­tions to this sit­u­a­tion, be­ing the ex­ec­u­tive branch the most af­fected, since it is re­spon­si­ble for iden­ti­fy­ing, de­sign­ing, im­ple­ment­ing, and eval­u­at­ing pub­lic se­cu­rity poli­cies.

The ab­sence of the State has also been re­flected in the very low bud­get ex­e­cu­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the Fun­dación Ciu­dadanía y De­sar­rollo, most of the min­istries reached 30% of bud­get ex­e­cu­tion as of the first se­mes­ter of 2022. This showed a weak­en­ing of pub­lic ser­vices, which in turn has had an im­pact on how cit­i­zens per­ceive the State. It seems that the na­tional gov­ern­ment, ad­vised by lib­er­tar­i­ans in fa­vor of a min­i­mal State, did not un­der­stand that the Ecuado­rian re­al­ity de­mands a pre­sent State, which pro­vides pub­lic ser­vices for the poor­est sec­tors, since an Ecuado­rian with an av­er­age in­come (200 dol­lars per month) needs pub­lic health, ed­u­ca­tion, and se­cu­rity, to at least sur­vive every day.

The gov­ern­men­t’s de­fi­cient man­age­ment, mainly in the so­cial sec­tor, was re­flected in its low ap­proval rat­ings, which var­ied be­tween 20% and 30%. In this con­text, the gov­ern­ment de­cided to im­ple­ment an 8-ques­tion ref­er­en­dum, in which it pri­or­i­tized the dis­sem­i­na­tion of a dem­a­gogic re­duc­tion of leg­is­la­tors and the pos­si­bil­ity of ex­tra­dit­ing Ecuado­ri­ans for transna­tional crimes such as drug traf­fick­ing, hu­man traf­fick­ing, arms traf­fick­ing, money laun­der­ing, among oth­ers. As part of its strat­egy, the ex­ec­u­tive em­pha­sized that ex­tra­di­tion was nec­es­sary to ex­pel crim­i­nals, pre­sent­ing it as an al­ter­na­tive to the in­se­cu­rity cri­sis, and that the re­duc­tion of ap­prox­i­mately 17 seats would gen­er­ate “great sav­ings” for the State.  Not even the very low ap­proval of the Leg­isla­tive Branch (close to 8%) helped the ex­ec­u­tive, and the “No” op­tion won in all the ques­tions of the con­sul­ta­tion.

Although the electoral result must be analyzed according to the particularities of each province and city of Ecuador, it is clear that the only winner of the day is the Movimiento Revolución Ciudadana (Citizen Revolution Movement), of former president Rafael Correa.

The les­son that the elec­tion day leaves to Pres­i­dent Las­so’s gov­ern­ment has been clear: democ­racy works as a re­ward or pun­ish­ment. If pub­lic ser­vices are pro­vided to cit­i­zens, trust in in­sti­tu­tions is pro­duced and peo­ple can vote for the con­ti­nu­ity of a gov­ern­ment or for the re­forms it pro­poses. How­ever, if there is no man­age­ment from the state or­ga­ni­za­tions to pro­vide the es­sen­tials to the cit­i­zens, the re­jec­tion vote will be the re­sult. There is no greater sci­ence in this: David Eas­ton al­ready said it in the 1960s, the in­sti­tu­tions of the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem must meet the de­mands of so­ci­ety to con­sol­i­date its le­git­i­macy.

Hope­fully, the pres­i­dent and his team will fi­nally redi­rect the course of his ad­min­is­tra­tion, mainly in the so­cial sec­tor. This, just in case they want to avoid more pop­u­lar re­jec­tion that could un­leash a new wave of protests, or the con­sol­i­da­tion of his po­lit­i­cal an­tithe­sis, Cor­reism.

But this elec­tion also leaves some lessons for the rest of the po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tions. The null vote has been sig­nif­i­cant and is a symp­tom of the wear and tear of the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem. For ex­am­ple, in the province of Pich­in­cha, this op­tion reached 17.98% of the votes and sur­passed the can­di­date who reached third place (15.76% of the valid votes). For the may­oralty of Quito, on the other hand, the null vote reached 13.76%, sur­pass­ing 8 may­oral can­di­dates. For the may­oralty of Guayaquil, the null vote reached 10.68%, be­ing the fourth op­tion among the vot­ers of this can­ton. The mas­sive nul­li­fi­ca­tion of the vote should call the at­ten­tion of all po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tions in the coun­try, as it could later trans­late into an “Out with All”, some­thing that Ecuador al­ready ex­pe­ri­enced be­tween 2005 and 2006, and which is cur­rently pre­sent in Peru.

* Juan Fran­cisco Camino Uni­ver­sity Pro­fes­sor (Quito). PhD stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Sala­manca (Spain). Mas­ter in In­ter­na­tional Re­la­tions by the In­sti­tuto de Al­tos Es­tu­dios Na­cionales (Ecuador) and in Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence by the Univ. of Sala­manca.

Cover im­age: La Es­per­anza