Pachakutik Support for Gonzalez

ECUADOR - In Brief 02 Apr 2025 by Magdalena Barreiro

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As a follow up to my webinar of last Monday, I wanted to present our perspective on how Pachakutik could vote on April 13. By the end of Sunday, March 30th, Pachakutik decided to officially support Luisa Gonzalez. Leonidas Iza conditioned this support to the following points: no oil neither mining concessions, focalized diesel subsidies, and reduction of VAT back to 12%. Luisa Gonzalez signed a pact with Iza conceding these demands. When asked where did she might get the money to replace these lost sources, she openly declared her intention to take money from international reserves. The pact immediately raised criticism from various indigenous groups especially from past leaders from Pachakutik and current Packakutik authorities like Lourdes Tiban. In Loja, indigenous groups even threaten to apply “indigenous justice” to Iza. Hence, his absence on Sunday when the pact with Gonzalez was sealed. The division in the political organization is more evident than ever, but albeit they represent less than 8% of the Ecuadorian population, votes from other leftist groups like socialists and communists might join them. Thus, their decisions must be followed and carefully calibrated. However, given the abovementioned context, we maintain our estimations provided on Monday that votes from Pachakutik could be split roughly 70% for Gonzalez, 28% for Noboa and the remaining might be null or blank votes. We also confirm that expecting a reasonable government from Gonzalez is hopeless. We are waiting to see reactions from the nine elected Pachakutik legislators to this pact in order to form an opinion on how they might align in congress –a decision as important as the voting support on ...