Government of Guillermo Lasso

On the afternoon of 24 May, Lasso signed his first decrees, in which he initially officially presented the ministers of his cabinet.^[14] Among them was the modification of the Sports Secretariat, transformed into the Ministry of Sports, in addition to the removal of the names of citizens from the risk register who had debts of up to US$1,000.^[15]

He also assigned functions to Vice President Alfredo Borrero, who will be in charge of coordinating public policies for the strengthening of the National Health System and representing the country before international health organizations.^[16]

Finally, he repealed the general regulations to the Communications Law and announced that he would send a bill on freedom of expression to the National Assembly.^[17]

When he took office, Ecuador was facing a serious economic crisis, with a GDP decline of 8% in 2020, due mainly to the COVID-19 pandemic and the fall in oil prices.^[18]

On the eve of his inauguration, he announced the privatization of three refineries, highways, the public telecommunications company, and Banco del Pacífico, as well as tax exemptions for investments in the tourism sector for a period of thirty years.^[19]

In August 2021, the president decreed a reduction of the tax rate to 0% on the tax on capital outflows for transfers, remittances or movements of foreign currency made by foreign airlines authorized to operate in the country.^[20]

The economic recovery was slow after the GDP fall in 2020: +2.8% in 2021 and +3.5% in 2022, mainly thanks to oil sales. This was one of the weakest performances on the American continent. At the same time, Ecuador came under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which demanded "structural reforms". To continue obtaining IMF funds, the government chose to cut public spending, causing a deterioration in services. Despite the pandemic, the hospital sector was subjected to a layoff plan, while budget cuts caused medicine shortages. Pressure on the living standards of the poorest increased.^[21]

In June 2022, his government committed to the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada to reactivate several hundred mining projects suspended by previous governments.^[22]

Lasso's government began amid the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in Ecuador. One of his campaign promises was to vaccinate nine million people in the first hundred days of his government.^[23] He appointed Dr. Ximena Garzón as Minister of Health and head of the vaccination against COVID-19.^[24]

Vaccination was suspended nationwide on the day Lasso took office as president, due to an inventory of doses, and resumed on 26 May 2021.^[25]

To achieve the goal of immunizing 9 million people, on 27 May 2021 the Ministry of Health and the National Electoral Council (CNE) reached an interinstitutional agreement to support the vaccination plan, in which the CNE undertook to:^[26]

• Support the execution of the vaccination plan at electoral polling places.^[27]
• Make available to the Ministry of Health the electoral roll used in the last elections.^[28]
• Create a web application so that people could consult their vaccination site, which was launched on 29 May 2021. At first this application had access problems because of the heavy volume of queries,^[29] but these problems were later solved.

On 3 October 2021, the publication of notes linked to the Pandora Papers (in Spanish, Papeles de Pandora) began,^[30] a set of 11.9 million documents analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The information is related to various offshore accounts of celebrities, politicians and very wealthy people.

The different journalists who participated in the analysis of the information were able to determine that there are links between offshore companies and political leaders, businesspeople, people connected to finance, and artists. It was determined that "35 world leaders hid their fortunes in tax havens". Among them was President Guillermo Lasso.^[31][32]

According to the Chapultepec Index of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), Ecuador was ranked in 2021 in 13th place in the American ranking of freedom of expression and press, being classified in the list of countries "with restrictions" on press freedom and dropping to 14th place in 2022, remaining in the same place in 2023.^[33]

Since 2021, Ecuador has suffered a security crisis resulting from conflicts between criminal organizations with links to drug trafficking. The wave of violence has generated a marked upturn in the number of murders in the country. On 18 October 2021, Guillermo Lasso declared a state of exception throughout the national territory for 60 days due to the increase in criminal activity.^[34] In 2021, the intentional homicide rate reached 14.04 per 100,000 people (the highest since 2011),^[35] compared with a rate of 7.8 in 2020.^[36] These figures continued to increase in 2022. The most violent area of the country is the one comprising the cantons of Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón. That area saw 53 murders between January and February 2021 and 162 in the same period of 2022.^[37] On 10 August 2023 he declared a state of exception in the national territory due to the increase in criminal activity nationwide.^[38]

The focus of the violence developed inside the country's prisons,^[39] with events such as the Guayaquil Penitentiary massacre of 28 September, which occurred in 2021 and is considered the fifth bloodiest prison massacre in the history of Latin America. In total, 503 inmates were killed in the country during 2021 alone.^[40] However, the wave of violence also manifested itself outside prisons. This was reflected in public perception, as shown by a survey conducted by Click Research in October 2021, which indicated that crime was considered by citizens to be the biggest problem facing the country.^[41]

In June 2022, anti-government protests broke out in Ecuador.^[42]

The 2022 Ecuador protests began on 13 June; these were a wave of mobilizations carried out from 13 to 30 June 2022, called by several social organizations, mainly by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), in opposition to the policies of Lasso's government.^[43] The mobilizations occurred after the first year of Lasso's government, during which the price of fuels and the basic family basket had risen considerably;^[44] in addition to the worsening of the security crisis that had been affecting the country since the government of Lenín Moreno.^[45] Likewise, shortages and the inoperability of the public health system were highlighted.^[46] After 18 days of the national strike, the indigenous organizations and the government reached an agreement thanks to the mediation of the Ecuadorian Episcopal Conference; the parties to the conflict signed a "Peace Act" drawn up by the Church as mediator, in which they agreed on various points. Among those present were government authorities and representatives of CONAIE, FEINE and FENOCIN.^[47] The executive agreed to reduce the price of fuel, to work on targeting its subsidy, to repeal executive decree 95, related to oil policy, and to reform decree 151 to prohibit mining activity in protected areas. For their part, the indigenous organizations declared an end to the mobilizations and a return to their communities; in addition, the agreements established a dialogue table that would last 90 days.

On 1 April 2023, Lasso's government authorized the carrying of firearms for citizens who meet the requirements of the law in the country.^[48]

On 9 January 2023, the digital outlet La Posta published an investigation showing a corruption network in public companies, led by Danilo Carrera Drouet, Lasso's brother-in-law. His trusted operator would be Rubén Chérrez, who in 2021 created seven companies in a single day and would be prosecuted for drug trafficking. The scandal was named the "El Gran Padrino Case".^[49] The government remained silent for two days, until Guillermo Lasso, in an interview given on 11 January, rejected the accusation and defended Carrera.^[50] Subsequently, four of the main people implicated in the case fled the country; one of them reportedly rented an armored truck, allegedly to transport cash and some goods.^[51] On 20 January, eleven days after La Posta's publication, the Prosecutor's Office carried out eight simultaneous raids in Guayaquil and one in Quito as part of the investigations of the case, renaming it the "Encuentro case".^[52]

The impeachment of Guillermo Lasso is a legislative procedure carried out by the National Assembly of Ecuador in accordance with the parameters established by the Constitution of the Republic, due to accusations of corruption in public companies within the Encuentro case. After investigations carried out by an ad hoc legislative committee made up mostly of opponents of the government, a non-binding report was presented that led the full Assembly to approve the start of impeachment proceedings against the president on 4 March 2023.

The impeachment process began on 16 March, and its admissibility was approved by a ruling of the Constitutional Court on 29 March.^[53]

The impeachment itself began on 16 May, with the questioning by assembly members Viviana Veloz and Esteban Torres. Subsequently, President Lasso appeared before the full legislature, but did not exercise his right of reply, which his questioners did. After these interventions, the president of the Assembly, Virgilio Saquicela, opened the debate.^[54]

On 17 May 2023, Lasso dissolved parliament through Executive Decree 741, in which he activated article 148 of the National Constitution, called muerte cruzada, arguing in his decree "serious political crisis and internal commotion". This decree requires the National Electoral Council to call extraordinary presidential and legislative elections, to complete Lasso's term, within seven days.^[55]

External videos
Militarization of the National Assembly of Ecuador, 17 May 2023.

That measure, together with the militarization of the Legislative Palace, was considered by much of Ecuadorian public opinion and the political sector as a political maneuver to stop the trial being carried out in parliament against President Lasso. In addition, it was described as "illegal" by those political actors; therefore, six actions of unconstitutionality were filed against the presidential decree.^[56][57][58] However, the Constitutional Court rejected the lawsuits and ratified the muerte cruzada decreed by the president.^[59]

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In May 2023, the National Assembly officially began a second impeachment proceeding against President Lasso. As a result, on 17 May 2023, Lasso dissolved the National Assembly by invoking a constitutional measure known as muerte cruzada, triggering the 2023 general election.^[103]