Guillermo Lasso assumed as president of Ecuador: 'The era of caudillos is over'

05/24/2021 1:15 PM

• Clarín.com

• World

Updated 05/24/2021 1:26 PM

In front of leaders from all over Latin America, former banker

Guillermo Lasso took office as the new president

of Ecuador in front of the National Assembly in Quito, the country's capital.

"In this new century of republicanism that we

are

beginning,

the era of the caudillos is ending,

" said the banker in his original speech, referring to the country's independence, which is celebrated on May 24.

Lasso,

a 65-year-old member of Opus Dei

, was sworn in in a ceremony led by the head of the unicameral National Assembly, Guadalupe Llori Barca.

The former banker had started the day by attending a mass in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Quito, accompanied by his family and the ministers appointed to the new government.

The brand new president, whose term will last four years, reviewed multiple issues in his presentation, from the country's complex economic scenario and the failures of previous governments, to his promise that with him old antagonisms would end and a new era was inaugurated in the country.

The Vice President of Ecuador, Alfredo Enrique Borrero (r), accompanied by his family, arrives for the inauguration ceremony of President Guillermo Lasso.

Photo: EFE

"We will not persecute anyone and we will govern for everyone. This means not to govern against anyone, nor in favor of privileged sectors," he said. 

"The era of political persecution is over. I have not come to satisfy the hatred of a few, but to calm the hunger of many," he said, while remarking that the

"only answer to authoritarianism is democracy."

.

The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, and King Felipe VI of Spain, in addition to the leaders of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, were present.

Argentina was represented by the Foreign Minister, Felipe Solá, who gave Lasso a letter from President Alberto Fernández, in which the president renewed his

"best wishes" for the administration

that is beginning.

In the ballot on April 11, the former banker took revenge against the former socialist president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) by

defeating his dolphin, the economist Andrés Arauz

, by 4.72 points.

For his four-year term, Lasso promises a "government of the encounter" that will seek to overcome the polarization between correísmo and anticorreísmo, and a fierce fight against corruption.

Since leaving power, Correa has lived in Belgium, where his wife is from, and was sentenced in 2020 in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption.

The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro (r), is received by the president of the National Assembly of Ecuador, Guadalupe Llori, for the inauguration ceremony of President Guillermo Lasso.

Photo: EFE

Several former officials of his progressive government are also in jail for corruption, including his former vice president

Jorge Glas, who since 2017 has been serving six years in prison

for receiving millionaire bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

"We are not going to allow impunity. Let the corrupt be afraid, normal. Let those who abused Ecuadorians be afraid, normal," Lasso said last week, when presenting his cabinet.

With the forces dispersed and without an absolute majority in Congress, his Creando Oportunidades (CREO) movement had to ally itself with sectors of the center and left to achieve a front that assumed control of the Legislative Assembly, excluding correísmo.

With the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as Ecuador's main financier in exchange for structural reforms, social sectors oppose tax increases and privatization plans.

Lasso has anticipated public-private partnerships

and concessions to obtain resources.