DSA IC congratulates Revolución Ciudadana on its electoral victories and condemns right-wing violence in Ecuador

The Democratic Socialists of America International Committee (DSA IC) congratulates Ecuador’s Revolución Ciudadana party (RC, Citizen’s Revolution) for its victories in Ecuador’s elections of February 5, 2023. Citizen’s Revolution candidates won election for prefect in seven of the largest provinces of Ecuador as well as elections for mayor in six of Ecuador’s largest cities, including Guayaquil and the capital of Quito. RC also won elections for mayor in more than sixty cities and Prefect in nine provinces. In Guayaquil, RC overcame thirty-one years of rule by the Social Christian Party (PSC) to win the mayorship. RC also won three seats on the national Citizen’s Participation Council, a fourth branch of government charged with overseeing proper governance.

DSA IC also congratulates the voters of Ecuador on the defeat of eight national referenda that Ecuador’s right-wing President Guillermo Lasso had proposed. We congratulate all Ecuadorian organizations which worked to defeat the President’s referenda including Revolución Ciudadana, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), the National Confederation of Campesino, Indigenous, and Black Organizations (FENOCIN), the Ecuadorian Federation of Indigenous Evangelicals(FEINE), and the Confederation of Workers of Ecuador (CTE), among others. By contrast, Lasso’s party won no elections for prefect and no election for mayor of any major city. 

We condemn the political violence around the elections, including the assassination of candidates for office. We call for vigorous investigations and prosecutions of all those involved. Candidates of Citizen’s Revolution were especially targeted in these acts of terrorism, and two were assassinated on Ecuador’s coast. One of the assassinated candidates was the winning candidate for Mayor of Puerto López, Omar Menéndez, who was killed the day before the elections by a death squad that claimed responsibility in a posted video. Another RC candidate, Julio César Farachi, who was running for Mayor of Salinas was assassinated on January 24, 2023. The house of another RC candidate running for Mayor of El Carmen, Franklin Espinoza, was also attacked on the eve of the election. Fifteen violent attacks against politicians were recorded during the elections, according to Radio Pichincha.

Overcoming the deadly attacks against its candidates, the victories by former president Rafael Correa’s party Citizen’s Revolution are all the more impressive given the six-year campaign of repression by all ruling class institutions. This campaign has included lawfare tactics of politically-motivated legal prosecutions and unfair trials, as well as daily propaganda against the party by Ecuador’s completely right-wing mass media, which international corporate media simply echoes. Correa was tried and convicted on corruption charges in absentia by lawfare methods. While he remains in exile in Belgium, InterPol has repeatedly rejected Ecuador’s request to arrest him. The DSA IC calls for justice and due process for former President Rafael Correa and the overturning of the lawfare conviction against him.

The DSA International Committee expresses solidarity with the Citizen’s Revolution and the left and progressive social movements in Ecuador. We stand in solidarity with their struggles against Ecuador’s oligarchy of rich capitalists and landowners and the neoliberal economic agenda which they seek to impose under President Lasso. We will continue to disseminate the truth to the people of the United States about what is happening in Ecuador in solidarity with the struggles for social and economic justice for all exploited and oppressed in Ecuador.