Esteban Torres, Deputy Government Minister of Ecuador Claimed Opposition lawmakers are seeking to impeach President Daniel Noboa for “mental incapacity,” it was reported on Thursday.
Noboa (36 years old) Elected He ran as an outsider candidate, defeated socialist candidate Luisa Gonzalez, and was elected as the youngest president in U.S. history at age 35, taking office in October.
The election is widespread violence – Most notably assassination Fernando Villavicencio, an anti-China, anti-socialist candidate, Expose Villavicencio’s work contributed significantly to the conviction and eight-year prison sentence of Ecuador’s former socialist, pro-China president Rafael Correa, who has been in exile in Belgium since 2018. absence He was sentenced to prison in 2020 for corruption.
Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot and killed outside the school minutes after waving the Ecuadorian flag at a campaign event at the school in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, on Wednesday, August 9, 2023 (API via The Associated Press)
Noboa’s predecessor, conservative former President Guillermo Lasso, was the target of 14 impeachment attempts by socialist lawmakers after taking office in 2021. Lasso said at the time that the successive impeachment attempts made it impossible for him to govern.
Due to constant denunciations, Lasso Use In May 2023, a well-known constitutional provision known as “mutually assured death” was passed, dissolving the legislature and allowing President Lasso to rule by decree for six months, while a new president and parliament were elected in October. Introduced The clause was added to the constitution in 2008 during the socialist government of Correa but has never been used.
Lasso was eligible to run in the October election but ultimately decided not to. Noboa was elected to serve out the remainder of Lasso’s term, which was originally scheduled to end in May 2025. Noboa previously said: Confirmed He plans to run for reelection in 2025.
Deputy Minister Torres warned on social media about the National Assembly’s plans to impeach President Noboa. post On Thursday, he claimed some lawmakers were “already broadcasting all kinds of nonsense medical reports” just to attack President Noboa and his government.
Political rebel groups have sprung up around President Obama’s approval and voting intent figures, and current planned policies include inventing and reinventing the “confidence era” of incompetent politicians…
— Esteban Torres Cobo (@etorrescobo) June 20, 2024
“President Noboa’s popularity and voting intention figures are extremely frightening for the opposition political camp. [National] “Congress is planning to fabricate and rework the ‘old and trusted’ grounds of mental disability to disqualify him politically,” Torres’ message read.
Torres’ “old and reliable” comment was a reference to Ecuador’s former president, Abdalla Bucaram. Impeached He was sentenced to death in 1997 by the Ecuadorian Congress for “mental incompetence.”
Torres argued that opposition lawmakers “no longer know what else to do” to remove President Novoa from power.
“They are [the opposition] “They are now radicalizing the ‘anti-Novoa’ faction because they were unable to field candidates just months before the elections,” Torres continued. “Even the Citizens’ Revolution [former socialist President Correa’s party] 20 percent [support] The parties themselves have lost their political sense, not to mention other parties with narrow margins and millimetre-sized electoral options.”
Valentina Centeno, a member of Ecuador’s ruling National Democratic Action Party (ADN). Echoed He accused the National Assembly of repeating the steps of the previous Congress by ignoring President Torres’ warnings and seeking to impeach President Noboa by declaring him mentally unfit to rule.
“The old politicians and do-nothings in the plenary session of Congress want to bring about a debate and a discussion on President Daniel Novoa’s mental disability, which means they want to declare him insane,” Centeno told reporters.
attention. @Valencenteno (ADN) “Troncha” @AsambleaEcuador I want to be president Daniel Noboa And then he lost his strength. El Universo pic.twitter.com/fZ5ZBeG2V7
— Vicente Ordóñez P. (@vicenteopi) June 20, 2024
Viviana Veloz, first vice-speaker of Ecuador’s Congress and a member of former President Correa’s socialist party, the Civil Revolution, denied Centeno’s accusations and said the Ecuadorean parliament was not seeking to declare Novoa a “madman.”
“There is no desire to declare a mental disorder, as they would have the Ecuadorian people believe,” Veloz stressed, arguing that the statement is “one of the many ploys that the government concocts every week to stop people from speaking out about important issues, such as the deterioration of security and the shortage of medicines.”
Veloz said: Cutting edge Regarding the attempted impeachment against former President Lasso, he said he would consult with the Legislative Management Committee on “the appropriateness of disciplinary action against Mr. Centeno.”
Ecuador’s National Assembly released the statement on Thursday. Blame With Mr. Noboa Published In the article New Yorker This week we look at Latin American heads of state.
In New Yorker In the article, journalist Jon Lee Anderson quotes Noboa as calling Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a former terrorist, a “left-wing snob” and dismissing Argentine President Javier Milley, saying, “He hasn’t accomplished anything since he became president. He seems conceited. That’s so Argentinian.”
Anderson said some of Noboa’s advisers “speculated that Noboa was on the autism spectrum.”
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld Claimed on wednesday New Yorker They claimed the article was intended to “cause harm” and that quotes purportedly from Noboa in the article had “undoubtedly been quoted out of context.”
In an interview with local Centro Radio, Foreign Minister Sommerfeld said he had spoken to several foreign ministers from the region and that “they understood, without a doubt, that the aim of the article was to damage and destroy what are currently very good relations with the countries named.”
Alejandro Muñoz, Secretary General of the Ecuadorian National Assembly stated On social media, Novoa and New Yorker The article “Do Not Consider a Declaration of Mental Incapacity.”
Christian K. Caruso is a Venezuelan author documenting life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter. here.
