Ecuador’s president vows to dissolve congress if it tries to impeach him

Ecuador’s president Guillermo Lasso has vowed to dissolve congress and call early elections rather than allow legislators to impeach him on what he says is a false corruption allegation promoted by political opponents.

Lasso, one of Latin America’s few remaining investor-friendly presidents, has fought off repeated attempts by the leftwing-dominated congress to remove him, as once-tranquil Ecuador is overwhelmed by a tide of drug-related killings.

The self-made banking millionaire told the Financial Times that he would appear before congress in about 30 days to defend himself against the corruption charge. It relates to a contract made by the state oil transport company Flopec, which it signed with a tanker company three years before he took office.

“Nobody has done more than me to fight corruption,”  Lasso said in an interview at the Carondelet government palace in Quito. “Embezzlement is defined as a crime where someone takes advantage of public funds for their own benefit. I haven’t used public funds for my own benefit.”

Lasso said he was “not ruling out” winning over enough legislators but in “the most probable scenario”, where he could not muster enough support, he would trigger early elections before congress could oust him.

“The other scenario which I will avoid, because it is not correct . . . is the censure of the president”, he said.

Asked if that meant he would invoke a constitutional clause known as “mutual death” to force elections for both his own job and a new congress, Lasso replied: “Correct, correct. That’s what I declare.”

Despite having only a 22 per cent approval rating, according to a recent poll, Lasso insisted that he would run again in a new election. “I have a duty to my voters,” he said. “I will be a candidate.” 

Sebastián Hurtado, head of the Quito political risk consultancy Profitas, gave Lasso little chance of survival. “Personally, I think he’s lost,” he said. “Something extraordinary could happen . . . but the legal and criminal details hardly matter now. It’s a totally political issue.”

Were Lasso to trigger the “mutual death” clause, which has never been used, Hurtado predicted conflict. “I fear there could be a constitutional crisis, as some of the opposition have said they won’t recognise it.”

In the meantime, the president intends to crack down on the drug-related violence that is the top concern of Ecuadoreans, according to polls. With police and the judiciary tainted by corruption, he is pinning his hopes on the military. The Andean nation’s murder rate almost doubled last year as Mexican and Albanian mafias battled for lucrative cocaine smuggling routes.

Lasso said violence had spiked in part because his government had seized far more drugs than its predecessors — about 400 tonnes in 22 months with a US street value of $15bn. 

“Anyone can build a road, anyone can build a hospital, anyone can build a university . . . but not anyone can fight corruption and drugs,” said the president.

Although the Flopec corruption case against Lasso is seen by analysts as weak, the president’s image has been tarnished by a separate investigation into alleged influence-peddling by his brother-in-law, Danilo Carrera. Carrera has denied wrongdoing.

Lasso said in January that Carrera, who chairs the board of Lasso’s bank, Banco Guayaquil, was an “honourable and irreproachable man”. The following month he conceded that Carrera “may not have been suspicious enough to detect dishonest people who wanted to use him”.

The constitutional court decided that evidence of Lasso’s alleged involvement in Carrera’s case was too weak to include in the congressional impeachment request and struck it out. Lasso said he had been aware of a police investigation into Carrera from the outset and had never attempted to interfere in it.

Following a disastrous local election defeat in February at the hands of the leftwing opposition movement of former president Rafael Correa, Lasso has reshuffled the presidential administration and hired a new communications chief, but the moves may be too late to save him.

In a further sign of trouble, five Democrat members of Congress wrote last week to US President Joe Biden asking him to review bilateral relations with Ecuador while “credible allegations of corruption at the highest levels” were probed.

The US government has strongly supported Lasso while Bob Menendez, chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, visited Quito last week with two other senators to express backing for the president.

The political turmoil has alarmed investors, who have driven down the price of Ecuador’s bonds on secondary markets. They fear that Lasso, who has kept spending on a tight rein, will be toppled and replaced by a leftwing borrow-and-spend government.

Lasso described his economic achievements as “extraordinary”, pointing to IMF forecasts showing Ecuador will grow 2.9 per cent this year with lower inflation than the US. Lasso predicts a budget deficit of about 1 per cent.

Business leaders, however, are concerned that the government has been too tight with money in a country where many have fond memories of the lavish public works carried out under Correa’s 2007-17 governments. They want Lasso to spend more.

Correa is living in political asylum in Belgium, after being convicted of corruption in 2020 and sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison. Polls show his public image is less negative than Lasso’s.

The president insists that Correa is behind the attempts to oust him.

“There’s a kind of debate between two models,” he said. “The populist, totalitarian model which we’ve had 10 years experience of under Correa and the model I represent — a democratic, humanist, liberal model.” 

Lasso, 67, suffers chronic pain caused by a botched operation years ago. Hours after the FT interview, he was admitted to hospital to treat a urinary infection. But the president insisted earlier he would go on to the end.

“Excuse me for using strong language but I’m bloody awkward, believe me,” Lasso said. “I’m no ordinary Latin American president and I don’t want to be. I’m here to fight for my ideals”.