Ecuador: ELECTION RESULTS – MORE OF THE SAME

We hereby publish an unofficial translation of an article by the Front to Defend the People’s Struggles of Ecuador:

At the end of the road, the most vivid expressions of the big bourgeoisie, represented by the comprador bourgeoisie (Noboa) and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie (González), made it to the second round. The other candidates, equally junior partners of these two political forces, were left with their shame exposed in the most scandalous way.

We have always said it: the only loser in this electoral contest is our people. Why? Because opportunists of all kinds take advantage of their state of mind, plunged in anguish and despair, to offer them a “paradise” on earth, a scenario that, as always, will never come.

Did Noboa not promise employment in the previous elections, assure that he would not remove the fuel subsidies, that he would not raise VAT, that he would guarantee security and many other things?

But the people do not only lose because their aspirations and their will, supposedly expressed at the ballot box, are mocked, but because, once again, they are pushed and exposed to the bureaucratic path, to electoralism, to constitutionalism, to that old and outdated class democracy that only serves the interests of the ruling classes.

However, it is important to note that the election results do not necessarily accurately reflect the mood of the masses. Their political behavior shows the absence of conscious work within them and, at the same time, the urgency they feel for their most immediate problems such as security, employment, improving the standard of living, etc., to be resolved at any cost.

It must be recognized that these latest elections are, in particular, crucial for the interests of Yankee imperialism in the region. The possible continuation of Noboa at the head of the old bureaucratic apparatus would guarantee a series of benefits for US imperialism, allowing it to consolidate its strategic position with greater strength and determination in the face of the contradictions it faces with other imperialist powers on a global level.

On the contrary, if Gonzalez were to win, these claims would be, to a certain extent, disturbed, since it would open up greater space for the influence of Chinese or Russian imperialism in the country.

But beyond this analysis, these elections also reflect a new realignment of bureaucratic capitalism, which demands its deepening by the hand of the comprador bourgeoisie, especially in light of the measures that Trump has been promoting in the United States and their impact on the international economic scene and the correlation of forces in the world arena.

On the other hand, there will be those who maintain that Leónidas Iza has become the “third most important political force in the country.”

We communists understand the clashes and struggles within the big bourgeoisie, which are particularly evident in the electoral processes. This has been the case ever since imperialism developed bureaucratic capitalism in Ecuador.

However, the behaviour of revisionists and opportunists has another connotation, because they, in theory, raise the flags of the masses, of the oppressed, but end up bargaining with their expectations, their pain and their struggles in the electoral heap of trash. That makes the difference.

If we were to take the elections as a political thermometer, Escala, from Unidad Popular, Pedro Granja, and others who call themselves socialists, did not even reach a percentage of votes equivalent to the number of members of their own parties. In other words, not even their bases voted for them.

However, we are clear that Iza’s emergence in the electoral contest marks an important milestone in the process of demobilization of the most combative sectors of society, especially the indigenous movement and the poor peasantry. These sectors, pushed into the electoral maelstrom, have been caught in the dispute between two bourgeois currents that, in essence, do not represent the interests of the masses, much less those of the poor peasants.

Leonidas Iza’s responsibility in this process of revolutionary demobilization is enormous and historic. When a leader crosses the threshold from the democratic path to the bureaucratic path, there is no turning back. It has always been that way and it will continue to be that way.

The so-called “third electoral force” is not represented by Iza, but by the dissatisfied, those who, in a clear form of protest, decided to vote blank, null their vote or simply not show up for the electoral farce.

This force represents approximately 25% of the Ecuadorian electorate, a figure well above that achieved by Iza (5%). This figure is not insignificant, as it reflects the growing skepticism and lack of confidence in the old “democratic” apparatus, which more and more Ecuadorians perceive as a worn-out mechanism at the service of the ruling classes.

Leonidas Iza, who served as leader of the indigenous movement, now finds himself at a crossroads. Whether he wants to or not, he will have to sell his soul to one of the two factions of the big bourgeoisie. And if he does not do so, if he refuses to endorse his support to one of the blocks in dispute, he will end up benefiting Noboa by omission. But next to that hovel that Pachakutik has become, he has another scenario, negotiating the seats in the Assembly for the presidency and commissions in it. That is, everywhere he has no choice but to adhere to the dynamics of bourgeois/big-landlord-democracy and sell his “soul” to the highest bidder. His excessive ambition, his petty-bourgeois vanity, have brought him to the edge of the abyss: trapped between a rock and a hard place, but, above all, aligned with the wrong side of history, ideologically and politically, far from the masses.

We refer more incisively to Iza than to the other bastards of the country’s bourgeois politics, insofar as he betrayed the blood shed in the people’s uprisings to use it as political accumulation for the elections. Even so, Iza justifies his electoral defeat by criticizing the “lack of equity in the Ecuadorian electoral process”, pointing out that campaign financing creates an unequal competition. He denounced that the government allocated more than 130 million dollars to the electoral process, which, according to him, favors certain political sectors and makes fair competition difficult. Naive? A scoundrel? Did he perhaps think that the electoral contest within the framework of this old democracy was something that could be managed from ideological responses? Did he not understand or not know that votes, in bourgeois elections, constitute a commodity?

People of Ecuador, remember well: every time you participate in these electoral farces, the only ones who lose are us, the broad people’s masses. And the only ones who always win, regardless of the result, are them: your class enemies, in which not only the big bourgeoisie and the big landlords are aligned, but also the opportunists, that so-called Ecuadorian left, constituted in the scrotum of imperialism and the reaction in the country, whose only role is to divert the masses from the correct path, that of organization and struggle.

CAST AWAY THE FALSE CONSTITUTIONALIST ILLUSION OF THE VOTE!

ORGANIZE, COMBAT AND RESIST!