George Glass

Daniel Noboa, president of Ecuador, ordered the assault on the Mexican embassy in Quito, committing an unprecedented international illegality and subjecting the country to the possibility of sanctions that would further accentuate the multidimensional crisis caused in the last six years by three governments of neoliberal cut.

Noboa is the son of Álvaro Noboa, five-time presidential candidate, the richest man in Ecuador and the largest debtor to the treasury. The young president, whose emergence into national politics is recent, has committed a series of errors reflected in policies such as the increase in VAT, exonerations to the treasury of large debtors, reduction of the education and health budget with the dismantling of medical units, the decision to intervene in the war in favor of Ukraine, as well as the manifest solidarity with the Zionist State, which demonstrate the alignment with the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States Department of State and its ignorance of international diplomacy and the international treaties to which Ecuador is a party, when it orders the assault on the Mexican embassy in Quito, violence against diplomatic personnel and the kidnapping of a person in political asylum status.

The international illegality in this last act has earned the repudiation of the majority of countries in the world, as well as the concern of multilateral organizations, who have rejected the violation of the international norm and have urged the Ecuadorian government to take immediate corrective measures regarding international apologies to the Mexican State, as well as respect for the asylum status of Jorge Glas Espinel, former vice president of Ecuador, and the granting of his safe conduct to leave the country, as appropriate under the parameters of international law.

Despite the seriousness of Noboa’s decision, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has opted for the political maturity of assuming this outrage within the parameters of the breach of international law, which is why he has filed the respective complaint with the Court. International Court of Justice, as well as in the United Nations, so that, within the framework of the reestablishment and validity of international treaties, these organizations are the ones that impose the corresponding sanctions, as well as reparation to the Mexican State for the violations committed.

Many have wondered how it is that the president of a country with a peripheral and dependent economy like Ecuador’s made a decision that undoubtedly exposes its people to sanctions that can cause greater suffering. The answer is to review who is behind the decision and we find the co-government exercised with the State Department, who, upon observing the global repudiation, only had to make a lukewarm statement calling for the harmonious reestablishment of bilateral relations; a co-government that today has a North American military presence on Ecuadorian soil with the provision of the natural aircraft carrier in the Galapagos Islands, which has been operating since June 2019 with military flights on the Pacific coast, as well as with cooperation in state intelligence and the reestablishment of the credit line with the International Monetary Fund.

The scandal of recent days and the kidnapping of Jorge Glas, one of the bloodiest victims of the judicial war or lawfare in Ecuador, has allowed Noboa to point out that he governs with a heavy hand, that his harshness is capable of even going through a diplomatic headquarters, a speech that, amplified by media corporations, is part of his campaign for the popular consultation called at the beginning of his mandate, with questions that point to the improvement of national security (main citizen concern), the return to mechanisms of labor exploitation and the return of Ecuador to the ICSID (International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes) as part of its commitments to the transnational business sector of which it is part. He believes that he needs to win to legitimize himself at the most unstable moment in Ecuadorian politics, with a view to his presidential re-election, whose campaign will begin in the last quarter of this year.

Ecuador is today the most insecure and violent country on the continent, with an accelerated advance of organized crime; the second with the highest number of deaths in the Darién Jungle, the product of an unprecedented migratory wave, and with social impoverishment that makes the life of the Ecuadorian population more complex and subjects them to states of hopelessness. A country that, in addition to its tragic reality, is now awaiting international sanctions as a result of a businessman president who demonstrates his ineptitude and inexperience to lead Ecuador, a president who deviates from the feelings and dignity of a people who observes it from the shadows of uncertainty.

* She was president of the National Assembly of Ecuador for two periods (2013-2015 and 2015-2017) and of Parlatino, and founder of the Puebla Group; She is currently executive director of the Eloy Alfaro Institute for Democracy.