Ecuador’s congress votes to press ahead with impeaching president

Ecuador’s president Guillermo Lasso could face an impeachment trial in the coming days after the country’s national assembly voted on Tuesday to advance proceedings against him.

The opposition-controlled legislature voted in favour of moving ahead with proceedings by a simple majority of 88 votes out of 116 present. A supermajority of 92 out of 137 total seats would be required to secure Lasso’s removal.

The vote deepens a long-simmering political crisis as Lasso appears set for a showdown with an increasingly hostile congress. The opposition and Lasso’s defence team will be able to present evidence before congress.

Lasso, a millionaire and former banker, is accused by opposition lawmakers of corruption related to contracts signed with state oil transport company Flopec. He has denied the charges and described them as politically motivated. The contracts in question were signed in 2018, three years before he took office.

Lasso’s lawyer, Edgar Neira, told media that the move by lawmakers on Tuesday was not constitutionally valid.

Government minister Henry Cucalón wrote on Twitter that the process against Lasso “was born, developed and ended without proof, without arguments and with serious legal vacuums. We stand firm in defence of the right of Ecuadorians to live in a democracy”.

But Marcela Holguín, an opposition lawmaker and vice-president of congress said in a statement following the vote that “all Ecuadorians will have won” with Lasso’s removal. “We will be giving them an answer to the abandonment into which the miserable policies that Lasso’s government have plunged us.”

At any point before removal, Lasso could dissolve congress and trigger presidential and legislative elections under a clause in Ecuador’s constitution known as “mutual death”. In that scenario, he would govern by decree — overseen by the constitutional court — for six months while elections take place.

In an interview with the Financial Times last month, he said he would activate the clause if congress moved to remove him.

A report on Saturday by the assembly’s judicial oversight committee found that Lasso had “not been proven” to have “benefited from or benefited third parties by abusing public funds”.

But the committee did not approve the non-binding report that recommended dropping impeachment proceedings, with five of the nine members voting against it.

Lasso’s allies have said they have the votes to block impeachment, though Tuesday’s vote suggests he may struggle to survive.

The largest party in congress — that of former president Rafael Correa, who is living in Belgium to avoid being imprisoned in Ecuador for corruption — has said its 47 legislators will support Lasso’s removal. They all voted to continue with the process on Tuesday.

The indigenous Pachakutik party, the second largest in congress, is divided on the issue, with 12 voting to continue with the bid and 11 absent from the vote.

The rightwing Social Christian party, which broke with Lasso just before he took office in May 2021, also supports removing the president, though it has lost some of its members over the matter.

While not every lawmaker who supported Tuesday’s motion will necessarily support his removal, “today’s vote shows that the opposition is not far short of the required votes to secure Lasso’s removal”, said Sebastián Hurtado, head of the Quito political risk consultancy Prófitas.

“The vote is clearly close and a lot can happen before impeachment, but I don’t think Lasso’s prospects have improved after today’s vote.”