Vice Minister Esteban Torres reacted to the possibility that Vice President Verónica Abad will replace President Daniel Noboa in the electoral campaign, for the 2025 elections.
Vice Minister Esteban Torres appeared before the media on May 27 in the government’s new communication format.
The Vice Minister of Governance, Esteban Torres, recognized this May 27 that the government of Daniel Noboa is attentive to all the legal and electoral processes surrounding the vice president, Verónica Abad.
Torres described it as “disastrous for the country, that a person who does not agree with the president’s vision and actions assumes power,” given the possibility that Abad will replace him when Noboa asks for leave to campaign in search of re-election. , in the 2025 elections.
The argument is that “the first thing it will do is reverse all the victories that the government has had in the fight against impunity and insecurity,” added the Vice Minister.
Although he tried to distance himself from the actions against the Vice President, he said he understood that there are several legal paths to prevent her from assuming power.
“I know that there is a complaint in the Contentious Electoral Court (TCE) and we will be attentive,” said Torres in relation to the process proposed by the Participation Minister, Esteban Guarderas.
On Tuesday, May 28, Abad was summoned by the Prosecutor’s Office to give her free and voluntary version in the so-called Nene case, in which her son, Sebastián Barreiro, is being investigated for alleged influence peddling in the Vice Presidency.
“The president is not authoritarian, but incorruptible and by detecting precisely what is being discussed in that criminal process (Nene case), he has distanced her from the government.”
Esteban Torres, Vice Minister of Government.
Who would be Abad’s replacement?
Although the Executive claims to be focused on complying and advancing with the management, he does not stop thinking about hypothetical scenarios in case Noboa asks for leave and, by then, there is no vice president.
“When there is a definitive absence of the president or vice president, the president of the Assembly has to take over and call elections immediately, but that is not the case,” Torres explained.
What would be the options then? “What could happen is that, in the absence of the first president and the second president, the Presidency is entrusted to a ministry, something established by the Constitution,” he added.
