The four majority members of the Participation Council who will face impeachment in the Assembly are identified as “governmentists.” The three who are already safe from dismissal, on the other hand, are identified with correísmo, the PSC and the rebel faction of Pachakutik.
Ibeth Estipiñan, María Fernanda Rivadeneira, Hernán Ulloa and Francisco Bravo, at the session on November 1, 2022.
The decision of the Assembly to move forward with the possible censorship and dismissal of the four majority members of the Citizen Participation Council (CPCCS) is the conclusion of a controversy that has been going on for 10 months and that, along the way, ended with the removal of Guadalupe Llori as president of the Legislative.
This political trial was presented in February 2022. It came a few days after the Council was reconfigured with a new majority that removed Sofía Almeida from the presidency of the organization, and replaced Hernán Ulloa.
The division in the organism generated two sides, which engendered the two sides that exist in the Assembly:
- The “majority” of the CPCCS, made up of Ulloa, María Fernanda Rivadeneira, Ibeth Estupiñán and Francisco Bravo. These receive support in the Assembly from the pro-government BAN bench, part of the ID and the “organic” faction of Pachakutik.
- The “minority” of the CPCCS, made up of Sofía Almeida, David Rosero and Juan Javier Dávalos. They receive the support of the legislative majority, made up of UNES, the PSC and the “rebel” faction of Pachakutik.
With a consolidated legislative majority between UNES, the PSC and the Pachakutik “rebels”, in addition to a small dissident faction of the ID, the Assembly managed to keep Dávalos, Almeida and Rosero out of impeachment . In other words, they will retain their positions until May 2023, when the new councilors chosen in the elections take office.
While those who will face the possible dismissal of the CPCCS will be Ulloa, Rivadeneira, Estupiñán and Bravo.
For them there is little hope. The motion to impeach them reached 84 votes of the legislative majority, and only 70 are needed to remove and censure them.
Those who remain
The three minority members who were saved from impeachment do not face a possible dismissal from the CPCCS, and for the moment there is no other control process in the Assembly.
None of the three have admitted the political links that are pointed out to them with the legislative majority. However, their profiles do show a closeness to the three political tendencies that support them in the Assembly:
- Sofía Almeida worked, between 2008 and September 2018, in the State Comptroller General, in its Guayas delegation. The last position she held is that of audit specialist, which she resigned when she was already at the CPCCS. She was one of the candidates who publicly received the support of former mayor Jaime Nebot. In addition, she is the niece of former congressman and current Social Christian assemblyman Luis Almeida.
- David Rosero is the most experienced counselor. He was a member of the first Participation Council and exercised the opposition against the correista majority of that time. He was arrested in 2015, during the protests by the Teachers’ Fund, in Ibarra. He was a member of the Popular Democratic Movement (MPD), for which he was a candidate in 2006 and 2007. In 2017, he was a candidate for assembly for Popular Unity, but did not obtain the position.
- Juan Javier Dávalos is one of the names that former President Rafael Correa promoted for the CPCCS elections in 2019, for which he was investigated during the campaign by the CNE. He has held multiple public positions: in the Municipality of Quito, in the defunct Technical Secretariat for International Cooperation, in the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion (MIES) and in the also defunct Secretariat for Political Management, created in the Government of Rafael Correa. .
Those who would enter
The eventual dismissal of Ulloa, Rivadeneira, Estupiñán and Bravo from the CPCCS would leave four vacancies, which must be filled according to the ballots in which they were chosen: one man, two women and one member of towns and nationalities .
The next most voted on each of these ballots are:
- Carlos Figueroa. Medical specialist in General Surgery and union leader. He was a professor at the Central University and a doctor at the Lions Club. He was a refugee in Sarayaku in 2014, along with Fernando Villavicencio and Cléver Jiménez, sentenced for insults against former President Rafael Correa.
- Monica Moreira. Graduate in Education Sciences and specialized in Educational Management. She has a long career as a teacher in private institutions. She is running for re-election and is listed as one of the already qualified candidates for 2023.
- Karina Ponce. Economist. Former official of the Senescyt and teacher at the Eugenio Espejo Institute.
- Jaime Chugchilan . Lawyer, former employee of the General Secretariat for Migrants. He worked as a CPCCS official between 2019 and 2021.
The re-election gaps
The political trial against the four members of the Participation Council leaves a vacuum that has not been resolved: Rivadeneira, Estupiñán and Bravo are up for re-election , and their candidacies are already firm.
For this reason, the Council sent a query to the Attorney General’s Office to decide whether it was possible to prosecute them while they were already candidates. But this never received an answer, in the middle of the transition between the departure of Íñigo Salvador and the entry of Juan Carlos Larrea.
Now there is the great question of what will happen if Rivadeneira, Estupiñán and Bravo are censored and dismissed from the CPCCS, since one of the consequences of the political trials is the prohibition to hold public office for two years.
