Ecuadorian police stand guard outside a Guayaquil prison complex after a riot in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on Sept. 2, 2022. (MARCOS PIN/AFP via Getty Images)
Editor's note:
Rodrigo Jordan has a degree in Social Communication since 2003 and a master's degree in Communication Projects from the University of Navarra in Spain.
He is a consultant in Strategic Dissemination and Crisis Management and CEO of Rojo.Com and Hypermedia, communication consulting agencies with operations in Latin America.
He was Director of Communications for the Ecuadorian Ministry of Tourism in 2005. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
You can find more opinion pieces at CNNe.com/opinion.
(CNN Spanish) --
President Guillermo Lasso will serve 16 months in the presidency of Ecuador on September 24 and in terms of citizen security, the president gets one of his worst grades.
In almost a year and a half, the 18 million Ecuadorians have watched in amazement as the country has become a territory where crime and homicides reach worrying rates.
Statistics from the National Directorate of Crimes Against Life, Violent Deaths, Disappearances, Extortion and Kidnapping (Dinased) of the Ecuadorian Police reveal that, in the first eight months of this year, the number of intentional homicides has already exceeded everything recorded. in 2021.
This is how last year there were 2,494 intentional homicides and as of August 13, 2022 there were already 2,647.
The trend is serious.
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This scourge -in a country where child malnutrition, rural poverty, full employment and informality have worrying indicators- is a true ultimatum to the already weakened governability of President Lasso, expressed, above all, in his constant disagreements and struggles with the first power of the State that is the National Assembly.
The uncontrollable wave of violence is rapidly degrading the lifestyle, the way of working, of producing, the confidence in democracy and the vision of the future of families.
And the worst thing is that, in my opinion, Ecuadorian society has hardly been able to react, because the Government, the National Assembly and the Judiciary have not had the capacity to transform and innovate their essential tools to combat crime and illicit businesses. .
This inability was made evident, for example, when Parliament approved on August 6 the new Organic Law that regulates the legitimate use of force, rejecting recommendations from the Presidency of the Republic to incorporate key articles that would make it possible to combat crimes more forcefully. .
This new legal body, then, was not issued as requested by the president, Guillermo Lasso, and the commander of the National Police, Fausto Salinas.
Despite the situation, it seems that it has not been urgent for the State to coordinate a major legal reform that toughens the penalties for intentional homicides or improves the work of judges.
Incredibly, there doesn't seem to be any rush for the government to regain sovereignty over the prisons and take urgent action to stop the bloody and constant inmate riots, reduce overcrowding, or improve the training and number of officers assigned to the prisons.
The lack of control in penitentiary centers has also made some prisons practically warehouses for weapons of all calibers.
The Report on Persons Deprived of Liberty in Ecuador 2022, prepared by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, speaks of all these aspects, which in its conclusions chapter recognizes that the Ecuadorian prison system is collapsed.
In the area of strengthening public order, the Government would not have any urgency in creating a new police force in accordance with the unprecedented historical stage that the country is experiencing, which in my opinion should take decisive actions such as seriously equipping the public force, transforming the intelligence and purge the police ranks.
We can still hear generals from the Ecuadorian Police talking about the urgent need for more support from the central government, despite the existence of their own economic resources and international cooperation.
I also believe that no criminal policy can be successful without intervening in the social base to multiply education and employment opportunities for the poorest population and from where the criminal gangs recruit their new members.
The same National Institute of Census Statistics (INEC) revealed in June that poverty and extreme poverty mercilessly attack 42.9% and 22.7%, respectively, of families in the rural sector, and throughout the country these figures they are 25% poverty and 10.7% extreme poverty.
The authorities must therefore understand that they cannot allow the majority of citizens to resign themselves to accepting that they are alone in this fight and that it is only up to them to devise personal security strategies and to ensure that crime does not touch their lives.
There are good examples of how populations previously plagued by violence have managed to reduce the number of homicides in the medium term, as is the case in the Mexican state of Sinaloa.
Finally, we must emphasize that if we do not move from speeches to results, we will only be accepting that criminality is stronger than an entire State and that Ecuador is not viable in the short term.