Finally, there has been no white smoke in the Carondelet Palace: President Guillermo Lasso will not run for re-election in the general elections that will be held in Ecuador on August 20. "After deep reflection, I will not accept the nomination to be a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic. I do it with a deep love for democracy; I do it out of deep respect for you citizens. When I decreed the dissolution of the National Assembly I said and I repeat it now: it is a decision that allows me to return to the citizens the power to elect a new president and a new Assembly," said the president, who announced that he will continue in his position for the next six months to try to carry out the planned program until the end of the legislature, within two years.
"It does not make any sense for me to campaign when I am needed dedicated to the citizens, when there are goals to be achieved and challenges pending," added the conservative president.
The 67-year-old Lasso's decision has not surprised Ecuador, since it was an impossible race against time to recover the support lost during his administration, despite the fact that the imposition of the constitutional tool of cross-death was welcomed positive by the majority of the country. The president insisted that he made this decision in the face of the "macabre plan" being carried out by the opposition, a plan that can now also be "defeated at the polls."
Lassó with this decree avoided a political trial that seemed won in his favor, but that did not solve the ever-increasing obstacle course that his presidency had become. Political instability and the unprecedented wave of violence in Ecuador, caused by drug cartels, have hit the Andean country with unusual force during two years of government.
Lasso's resignation thus clarifies the panorama of the center-right, from which two strong candidates are already emerging. None of them belongs to the government ranks, which will hold primaries to choose his standard-bearer. This is former vice president Otto Sonnenholzner, who has formed an alliance around him, which has also been joined by the Democratic Left, and deputy Fernando Villavicencio, whip of former president Rafael Correa.
Both candidates, and all the others, must appear at the polls in a binomial together with a woman, as ordered by the Electoral Contentious Tribunal. A gender parity also extendable to parliamentary lists.
At the moment there is only one officially registered electoral ticket, headed by Daniel Nova and with Verónica Abad as the vice-presidential candidate.
Further to the right, security businessman and legionnaire Jan Topic, who has fought in Syria and Ukraine, will have to reconfigure his candidacy as a "strong hand" against insecurity. The populist Social Christian Party (PSC), which abandoned Lasso to agree with Correa's revolutionaries, has shown its public support for him.
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