Started the calendar for the early elections in Ecuador. The National Electoral Council (CNE) made public on Wednesday what the express roadmap will be to reach the elections on August 20, in which the presidential binomial and the 137 deputies of the National Assembly will be elected.
If the winning candidate of the first round does not overcome the barrier of 40% of the support, plus a 10-point advantage over the second, the subsequent balloting will take place on October 15.
The 17 parties registered in the CNE have until June 7 to make primaries and up to three days later to present candidacies that are already advancing. One of those that is already confirmed is that of the indigenous leader Yaku Pérez, the great electoral surprise of 2021, who was only 30,000 votes short of going to the ballot. Pérez's disagreements with the radicals of the indigenous Pachakutik party and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (Conaie) have led him to agree on his candidacy with Unidad Popular and Democracia Sí, in addition to his movement Somos Agua.
The big surprise so far is the appearance of the outsider Jan Topic, a picturesque security businessman who has fought in Ukraine and Syria and who upholds the populist strong hand that gives so many political benefits in the region to the controversial Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele. Topic already has the support of the Social Christian Party (PSC), a traditional group that has strong support in the coastal areas, the same ones that suffer the onslaught of drug trafficking.
Meanwhile, President Guillermo Lasso, who has traveled to Houston to undergo a small cancer intervention, and his great rival, former President Rafael Correa, are defoliating the presidential daisy. Lasso's accountability speech last Wednesday sounded like a farewell, although his closest collaborators assure that he has not yet decided if he will present himself.
Correa, for his part, has the last revolutionary pairing (Andrés Arauz/Carlos Rabascall) to choose the politician who should prepare his return to the country through the front door, despite being sentenced to eight years in prison for corruption.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
