Ecuador’s Guillermo Lasso, to prosper politically, must contend with powerful Correa legacy

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Union for Hope (UNES), the progressive alliance that represents the political legacy of former president Rafael Correa, is the main opposition force to the government of conservative Guillermo Lasso, who will take office next Monday without solid support within the National Assembly.

And although the movement led by Correa proposed a governability pact to Lasso, the incoming president has been steadily putting up barriers against “Correaism”, a tendency that could be used, as ex-President Lenin Moreno did in his term, to try to cover up mistakes.

“Correa is to blame”, has been the slogan that Moreno’s followers have raised in the last four years of his administration, under the premise that everything bad that happened to the country came from the management of former leftist president Correa, who governed between 2007 and 2017.

For the lawyer and political analyst Ramiro Aguilar, Lasso could maintain this discourse, added to the “anti-Morenism” that could emerge, given the low poll ratings of the outgoing president.

The president-elect already used this strategy – not agreeing with either “Correism” or “Morenoism” – during the electoral campaign. Nonetheless, some leftist sectors attribute to him a close relationship with Moreno; Lasso categorically denies this, considering Moreno just another “Correaista”.

“The crisis is so strong that (Lasso) will have no choice but to continue blaming Correism for everything that goes wrong,” said Aguilar. On the other hand, he sees as positive that UNES has tried to soften its language and has even managed to reach understandings with the conservative Social Christian Party (PSC), something unthinkable in the past.

The PSC was allied with the CREO movement headed by Lasso during the electoral period that concluded with his victory in the elections of April 11, but, apparently, both have distanced themselves after the approximation of PSC to UNES, in a pact that could be limited to specific issues, although interesting in the parliamentary game.

UNES CRUCIAL IN THE ASSEMBLY

UNES is the largest political force in the National Assembly (Parliament), with 49 seats out of 137. Although it does not reach the majority of votes, it will be decisive in many important votes.

Lasso recently made clear his criticism of “correísmo” and rejected the pact offered by that movement, allegedly to reach necessary governability, given the critical economic and health situation the country is going through.

Lasso’s party CREO, which only has 12 seats, has had to make a pact with the members of the indigenous movement Pachakutik (26), the social democrat Izquierda Democrática (16), and independents to ensure a total of 70 votes; however, this linkage is not very solid, given some recent skirmishes between members of that coalition.

Aguilar believes that, given the circumstances, UNES could become an “efficient opposition” force if it avoids “radical divergences” and “intransigence” and maintains the objective of accumulating forces and becoming an alternative for the future.

The analyst even sees the possibility of progressivism consolidating at a regional level, given the latest trends in Colombia, Chile, and Brazil.

However, in Ecuador, it will be conservatism that will govern for the next four years, and, according to Aguilar, it will continue along the path already marked by Moreno.

For him, the course will be “neoliberal,” and, in that line, Lasso intends to consolidate his destiny; that is why several presidents of the region who are part of that conservative tendency will attend his inauguration.

Among those presidents are Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Chile’s Sebastián Piñera, Colombia’s Iván Duque and Uruguay’s Luis Lacalle Pou.