Ecuador: Progressive candidate heading for victory in election but will the result be respected?
Why progressives need to watch Ecuadorian election
By Fidel Narváez*
If the forecasts of the majority of the pollsters are correct, on Sunday Ecuador will elect the youngest president in its history. Andrés Arauz, the only progressive candidate on a 16-candidate ballot, is the overwhelming favourite to win the highest political office, turning 36 on the day before his election.
The electoral rules determine that, to win the presidency, the winner must obtain at least 40% of the valid votes and with a 10 point margin between him and his closest contender. Nine out of ten pollsters predict a resounding victory for the young candidate, except for the discredited company CEDATOS, financed by the lead contender in this election and representative of the financial elites in Ecuador, the ultra wealthy businessman and banking magnate Guillermo Lasso. The 66-year-old Lasso who is trying for the third time to reach the presidency, has the unconditional support of the current government, which in the last years has been aligned with Trump’s agenda for the region, to the point that Quito had never before received repeated visits from the highest representatives of the US government, including Pence and Pompeo, until the past four years.
Despite the forecasts that Arauz will win this election in a single round, the eyes of progressives around the world should remain open to avoid attempts to overturn the decision of the voters, a practice that has a history in the region and was even attempted by the Trump camp in the 2020 US elections. The powers that be, who have full control of the electoral body and who have supported the region’s most neoliberal program in Ecuador hope to force a second round or deny the results of the first round.
Andrés Arauz holds degrees in mathematics and economics from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in Development Economics. Despite his youth, this meteor of Ecuadorian politics has held prime[1] [FN2] positions in the Central Bank, been Undersecretary of Planning and was Minister for Science and Education in the government of Rafael Correa. Correa’s government bet on investment in higher education to move the Ecuadorian economy out of its dependence on extractive industries, and Arauz has made this a priority policy if he wins the presidency.
Arauz’s challenge will be restarting the process initiated 14 years ago by the Citizens Revolution which in 10 years doubled the size of the Ecuadorian economy, modernized its infrastructure, catapulted millions of poor Ecuadorians into the middle class and positioned Ecuador in the international arena as a successful laboratory for progressive policies. A transformation process that in 2017 was cut short with the current president Lenin Moreno, a Machiavellian character who betrayed his constituents to push forward the economic and political program of the elites who had lost the election, unleashed the fiercest political persecution that Ecuador can remember.
Arauz’s popularity has surged over the past year since his campaign started. Fluent in 4 languages and well versed in new technologies, Andrés Arauz promises the leadership of a new generation in the country’s administration. As a Minister, he helped prepare that generation by sending about 20,000 Ecuadorians to the world’s best universities. In fact, together with these young people, he has been building his government plan, through a tool called “Wikiplan”, which collects and systematizes thousands of citizen proposals, in a unique experience that augurs a participatory government focused on the needs of the majority.
Self-identifying as a post-Keynesian economist, Andrés Arauz has already positioned himself internationally as a promising figure in economics. Friend of intellectual heavyweights as varied as the Korean Ha Joon Chang, the Greek Yanis Varoufakis and the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, Andrés had been a prominent member of the Progressive International organisation, and is a principle proponent for the IMF to use its Special Drawing Rights (SDR), a mechanism by which the IMF can inject non-reimbursable resources, so as to support responses worldwide to the global pandemic.
But it is not only the charisma and personal qualities of the young candidate that explain his surprising success with Ecuadorian voters. The resounding failure of Lenin Moreno´s government, who at below 10% popularity, hits the lowest popularity figures in Latin America, plays in Arauz’s favour. Moreno’s administration has mirrored that of Trump, leading to a politicisation of Ecuador’s state institutions of a type unpleasantly familiar to all those following US politics over the past four years. Lasso’s close association with Moreno, co-governing with him, leaves him ‘contaminated’ at a time when contamination is a preoccupation of the whole population.
Arauz and Lasso represent diametrically opposed options. While Arauz designed and promoted a successful referendum that prohibits public officials from holding resources in tax havens, Lasso, one of the richest men in the country, has built his fortune precisely by using tax havens. While Arauz proposes the progressive collection of taxes to invest in the strengthening of health and education, Lasso proposes tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity measures, which in the middle of the pandemic entails, for example, fewer doctors and a smaller budget for health care. While Arauz proposes the repatriation of public capital deposited abroad to reinvest and assist the main victims of the economic crisis, Lasso favours the prepayment of foreign debt to foreign banks, when emergency domestic assistance is what is required. While Arauz wants to tackle violence and insecurity through social policies, Lasso wants to legalize the possession of weapons, following the lead from Bolsanaro’s approach to insecurity.
The choice has never been so clear: people or capital; progressivism or neoliberalism, the future or the past. Andrés Arauz’s motto in this election has been precisely that: “Recover the future.” And boy, has he positioned future-facing concepts in the political debate: access to the internet as a human right, the use of free software and the development of free knowledge for greater technological independence for the country. Concepts such as reverse mining or “circular economy” and international ecological debt so that the most industrialized nations compensate for the historical pollution they have generated.
If on February 7th, Ecuador opts for progressivism by electing Andrés Arauz as its president, I have no doubt that the country will once again occupy a worthy place in the international arena and Quito will once again be the capital of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), learning from the mistakes of the past and leading cutting-edge initiatives.
*Fidel Narváez is a human rights defender. He was the Consul of Ecuador and diplomat in London from 2010 to 2018.
