Many were surprised by the vote of the president of the National Assembly, Virgilio Saquicela, in favor of the dismissal of the president of the Republic, Guillermo Lasso, proposed by Correismo when days before it had been said that he should remain in office. He has his reasons and other political sectors speak of pressure at all levels.
What pushed Saquicela to make that decision was the government’s abrupt break with the dialogue process that had been held with the leadership of the indigenous movement since the weekend and which, according to him, was one step away from being resolved and lifting the national strike. .
Virgilio Saquicela, president of the Assembly, voted in favor of dismissing Guillermo Lasso
In an interview with EL UNIVERSO, he maintains that his “moral obligation” led him to be a facilitator of that dialogue between the Government and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), which kept the country in anxiety for two weeks, which in all In this dialogue process, the Minister of Government, Francisco Jiménez, participated and after three meetings the regime came out to disregard the leadership of the person with whom it had made progress in responding to its demands; that is, Leonidas Iza. That was a negative attitude, he notes.
As facilitator of the dialogue, he explains that he had no unbalanced relationship on one side or the other, to the point that the moderator of that meeting was the custodian priest of the Basilica of the National Vote. The only commitment assumed by the president of the Assembly, the president of the National Electoral Council and the ombudsman was to be guarantors that the agreements reached by the parties are fulfilled.
In the vote on the impeachment motion, Saquicela affirms that what he did was to submit to the legal procedure and evacuate everything that the procedure establishes, such as allowing the 109 registered to exercise their right to debate, and in addition, the President of the Republic requested the action of two pieces of evidence, which were read in Tuesday’s session and the debate was closed.
Already when exercising the vote, each one is free, adds Saquicela, because if he had voted against the dismissal, perhaps another sector would have questioned it, just as the ruling party does now by voting in favor; if I had voted abstention, criticism would still have arisen.
“I made a decision for myself, because it is true that the country is experiencing circumstances of social upheaval and internal political crisis, and obviously witnessing that the Government abandoned the dialogue table,” affirms the head of the legislature, and reiterates that that attitude of the regime pushed him to define his vote.
He insists that the Government has to sit down to talk with the indigenous movement because they are one step away from reaching an agreement and with this any situation can be prevented in the hours and days to come, such as the threat of marches and the use of force. public, on the other hand. If they believe that the dialogue should be with other interlocutors, it is not a problem, Saquicela notes, but they must do so.
That it respects the criticism of citizens and even those that are manipulated “from some sectors trying to find a distraction regarding the substance of the matter, which is dialogue and the solution to a problem,” he specifies.
Saquicela does not want to reveal if he was pressured to extend the session further before voting and even wait 72 hours once the debate was closed, but there are legislators who point out that the Correísta and related sectors asked for more time to convince more assembly members and gather the 92 votes.
Mireya Pazmiño, from the Pachakutik rebel group, points out that the president of the legislature should be questioned, because he personally asked him to wait 72 hours, in order to review hundreds of pages that he attached as exculpatory evidence for President Lasso, and only granted 24 hours, and the resolution proposed by the legislator Fernando Cedeño (UNES) was not attached in a timely manner.
He requested a point of order, but no way was given, since his intention was to wait a little longer “to see how the panorama unfolds after the Government ignored the president of Conaie and called for a confrontation between the communities and the villages”.
He reveals that he had the motion ready to request that he grant more time and that the UNES bench was on the same line, that he even made a phone call, but that Saquicela refused, and that he told him that his decision had been made.
Pazmiño explains that Saquicela voted for the dismissal of Lasso because he knew that there were no votes, because as soon as he saw that the Social Christians and a part of the ID voted against, “he knew that we had no support.” To overcome this problem, the government has to sit down and talk, otherwise they will ask for and pressure the resignation of the president, he warns.
The Social Christian Esteban Torres rescues the role of Virgilio Saquicela in having achieved the only moment that the Government and the protesters sat down to dialogue. What the president of the Assembly did not like is the breakdown of the dialogue, and that in some way motivated his vote in the plenary session, he assures.
On the one hand, he adds, they accused Saquicela of being a government supporter for calling for a vote on Tuesday and not waiting the three days requested by the correistas and other groups, and now they call him a correista for voting yes, “that’s politics.”
Torres clarifies that the vote in favor of the dismissal, even of the UNES bench, is not a coup, but a legal and constitutional application that other benches saw as inconvenient. “Coupism is what is taking place in the streets with subversive and terrorist actions that besiege citizens,” he indicates.
The legislator Wilma Andrade of the Democratic Left also applauds all the possibilities of dialogue, but at this moment for the Government there is no confidence that Saquicela will continue as a facilitator of that negotiation, because he supported the impeachment of the president and they have to look for other actors.
Some legislators speak that there was a plan to ensure that the impeachment vote is delayed at least one more day and exerted pressure on the president of the legislature, but that he sent for a vote despite harsh criticism from the sector that proposed the motion. One more day could have triggered more confrontation and violence in the streets, and therefore another would have been the result of the vote.
Ana Belén Cordero, from the official sector of CREO, says that for Correismo the time issue was important because the unofficial complaints about the “woman with the briefcase” in the Assembly were of concern to the Government. And for the UNES bloc, the longer the hours and days passed, the more opportunity there was for the removal of the president to be completed.
Even, she says, one of the legislators of the National Agreement Bank (BAN), Augusto Guamán, resigned from the bloc during the debate on the removal of the president, and in the case of Mariano Curicama (Chimborazo) he was pressured by some 200 people who They surrounded his house at the time of the vote.
For Cordero, Saquicela’s conduct of the session was not bad, but “I did see a lot of pressure, because never in parliamentary life are so many people given the floor, and the way of conducting was also different because it is not a person of extension cords, but it is more efficient”.
I understand that he wanted to be healthy in terms of the legal part and parliamentary respect, ”says the pro-government legislator, but that was tainted by the scandals of being committed to four seats to vote in favor of the dismissal. (I)