With the hope that the National Assembly of Ecuador will resume the debate today to decide the future of the country's president, Guillermo Lasso, the president took the initiative and announced late on Sunday the reduction in fuel prices, one of the main explosions of the protests and massive strikes against the Government led, above all, by the indigenous movement. Demonstrations that have had their reverse in others of the opposite sign, causing serious street clashes that have left a balance of four dead and two hundred injured. On the second day of debate, which lasted for seven hours and was carried out electronically, there were parliamentarians who denounced pressure and threats to vote for the removal of the president. The time difference will mean that the decision will probably not be known until tomorrow in Spain.
In a speech broadcast through the National Lock and social networks, Lasso announced the price of gasoline from 2,42 to 2,32 euros (2,55 to 2,45 dollars) per gallon (3,7 liters), without However, diesel will be reduced from 1,80 to 1,71 euros. ($1.90 to $1.80) per gallon. "For those who do not want to dialogue, we will not insist, but we cannot wait to give the answers that our brothers throughout Ecuador so much expect," he assured.
The president said that he had assumed all the points on the agenda of the indigenous movements – fuel price freeze, bank debt moratorium, fair prices, improvement in collective, health and education rights, cessation of violence. and that their direct ones have decided that Ecuador must return to normality. “Our country has been the victim of barbaric acts. None of those acts will go unpunished,” he added.
In Sunday's parliamentary session there will be complaints from pro-government legislators from CREO (Movement Creating Opportunities, Lasso's liberal-conservative party) and from the Democratic Left sober pressure they receive through phone calls, visits and demonstrations in front of their homes to support the removal of the president. In concrete terms, legislator Patricio Cervantes told the plenary session that minutes before his intervention, a group of people from the municipality of Caranqui came to his house, in the city of Ibarra, with banners and shouts in order to put pressure on him. "It is important that the country knows how it is pressured to force the will of the assembly members," said Cervantes. "But we will not allow a coup by a group of mafias allied to drug trafficking and narcoterrorism who want to destroy order."
CREO parliamentarians focus this campaign on former president Rafael Correa (currently a political asylum in Belgium) and other leaders of left-wing populism in South America, such as Bolivian Evo Morales, who has indicated on social media that in Ecuador they are massacring the indigenous population. The votes of 92 legislators were necessary to impeach Lasso; for now there is speculation with a sum that does not reach 80, although the purchase of wills is not ruled out.
Millionaires loses
Demonstrations in Ecuador protesting the high cost of living have so far caused economic losses of 475 million euros (500 million dollars), according to the Ecuadorian Minister of Production, Foreign Trade, Investments and Fisheries, Julio José Prado, as reported by 'El Comercio'. Among the most affected sectors is clothing and footwear, with a drop in sales of 75%. For the tourism sector, the first 12 days of the stoppage have meant a loss of approximately 48 million euros ($50 million). The minister confirmed that 1.094 oil prices were found, where he assumed a loss for Ecuador of 91 million euros (96 million dollars).
The president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), Leonidas Iza, announced over the weekend that the mobilization will continue in Quito due to the loss, according to the president of the Assembly, Virgilio Saquicela, and the government ministers, although government sources report that the country has changed the public order alert from red to yellow. In this sense, the Minister of Education, María Brown, announced that some educational centers will be able to return to face-to-face classes. In certain communities the decision will depend on the local authorities.
