Guillermo Lasso, the banker who ran into the drug cartels

Guillermo Lasso's professional life is summarized in a series of promotions in the world of banking and business that profiled him as a successful man. That placed him on the presidential poster, in line with the politician-managers who sprouted all over the world assuring how formidable it was to manage the State as if it were a corporation. After two unsuccessful attempts to seize power, he achieved it to the third in 2021, defeating the correísmo, which was in its lowest moments. He inherited a deeply indebted country, with empty coffers. It was the banker's hour.

However, nothing has gone as his prospect predicted. In just two years he has been cornered by the Ecuadorian Congress, which until today subjected him to a political trial for an alleged case of embezzlement. The process was an uncertain game that could end in his dismissal. But this man with a round face and square glasses, 67, has clung to the last spring he had left, did not want to leave anything to luck and activated what is known as cross-death. Without further ado, he decreed the dissolution of Parliament and immediately activated the call for legislative and presidential elections to which he himself can present himself if he wants. Lasso has left nothing to improvisation, which any entrepreneurship book recommends in a time of crisis.

Ecuador has been his office building these two years. Officials, their employees; Ecuadorians, their shareholders. He arrived assuring that he knew the formula to create employment and make the country return to the path of productivity. The same thing, according to him, he had done when he directed the Bank of Guayaquil, one of the largest in the country. Neither has happened. The country is experiencing a huge security crisis that has paralyzed the rest of the needs. Prisons have become a gang-controlled hole in which those who do not comply with the forcibly imposed law are beheaded and dismembered. Drug cartels have begun to control institutions and dominate part of the territory, in a process similar to that experienced by countries such as Mexico and Colombia.

Lasso was forced to start working at the age of 14 to pay for his studies and contribute to a household made up of 11 older siblings. It is deeply conservative morally and neoliberal economically; They are two truths to which he clings as if it were his life in it. People see in him and his family the idyllic model of the elite of Guayaquil, the second city of the country. He lives in the citadel, in the most exclusive residential area of the city of Samborondón. Of all the candidates who ran in the last election, he was the one who paid the most taxes, almost 700,000 dollars [about 645,500 euros] a year. He made some raise eyebrows when he promised to lower taxes.

But he proved to be very cunning. To win, it was not enough for him to win with the right-wing electorate, which had not installed a president in 20 years. Contrary to what had been his ideology, he reached out to the LGTBI collective and embraced the decriminalization of abortion in cases of rape. Lassus was open to listening to everyone and, the cursers said, he wanted to become president in any way. Nothing was impossible for him, not even to change his ideals. He arrived and stayed in the Ecuadorian economic elite without having a traditional surname and without a university degree that hung on the walls of his office. He is the living image of a self-made man.

During the pandemic, she led an initiative that raised funds and donated supplies to the health system. It grossed more than eight million dollars. That was his ideal state of affairs: private initiative coming to the rescue of the public with charity and good intentions. Of course, paying less taxes. In February he broke his fibula and a year earlier he had surgery in the United States to remove a melanoma in his lower right eyelid. He was operated on, yes, you guessed it, in private clinics. Although in April he became ill with the urinary tract and was placed in the hands of the military hospital in Quito. He was admitted to the ICU.

The CEO of Ecuador came with very good intentions. The country was going to be a sales leader in the Andean region and was going to trade on the stock market. The violence, the lack of control and the transfer of drugs ruined all those dreams. Reality prevailed over marketing. The final nail in his political coffin came in the form of political corruption. The opposition accused him of a crime of embezzlement for not having been responsible for a contract between the public oil transport company, Flopec, and Amazonas Tanker, which represented a loss to the State of six million. The impeachment hung over his head. Before the guillotine fell, he clung to cross death. It blew everything up. The banker who promised stability and good income statements has ended up in chaos.

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