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“Expulsion” of Correa seeks to stop access of his followers to elections
Posted On 13 Aug 2018
Ecuadornews:
Juan Pablo Arévalo, director of the Ecuadorian Movement Acuerdo Nacional (MANA), said today in an interview with Efe that the symbolic expulsion of Rafael Correa from his ranks was what he sought to prevent the participation of Correismo in the sectional elections next year.
“We will not participate in the sectionals if it is our turn, but we will give the legal fight until they recognize us as legal representatives of MANA,” said the executive.
Documentation in hand to refute the allegations of a press conference, yesterday, in which the original founder of the movement, Victor Hugo Erazo, “expelled” Correa symbolically from his ranks and introduced another person, Vanesa Suárez, as legal representative, Arévalo assures that Suárez resigned on May 7.
And that Erazo was looking to torpedo the MANA registry as a party, get to “litigation” and, with it, that they cannot go to the sectional with the followers of Correa.
MANA, a formation that has existed for years, was emerging in recent months as a refuge for correismo, given the difficulties that the followers of the former president are encountering to become a political party since they separated from Alianza País, after breaking with the current president Lenin Moreno.
Although they have tried to register him twice before the CNE, so far the correístas have not been able to obtain their own password, so in April they turned to MANA, which had obtained it, as a new political platform.
In that sense, Arevalo assures that it was he and a group of friends who reactivated an abandoned party that in 2013 was disqualified by the CNE for breach of electoral regulation, and that they did it because, otherwise, it would have been “more complicated, much longer”.
But they have nothing to do with the original founders, and that the alliance with Correa and his followers came later, in April.
Supported by the correísta militancy that separated months from the official movement Alianza País, Arévalo had planned to go today to present the 461,000 signatures they have collected, but has not done so for fear of losing them.
“We would lose the movement,” he responded when asked by Efe for the reason that led them to step back at the last moment and wait for the CNE to decide who the movement really belongs to.
And he justified himself in that if he delivered them and then the movement was in the hands of the original founders, those signatures, which are “followers of the Citizens’ Revolution,” would remain in the hands of others or be blocked as possible militants of another formation, until that each of them disaffiliated.
“It is a well thought-out move,” he insisted, recalling that the deadlines for submitting candidacies to the sectionals are coming due shortly, and that the CNE’s response will not arrive on time because they have assured him that they will be pronounced in “15 days”.
Ecuadorian local and regional elections are scheduled for March 24, so taking into account registration deadlines would need to submit signatures by the end of this month (“30 days before September 24”).
“What happened yesterday is planned,” Arévalo reiterated.
He stressed that the name of the new movement is “National Agreement for the Citizens’ Revolution”, the fission of the small group that he consolidated and another more numerous one that represents the correísmo, to which they joined because “they have a gigantic and national structure”.
That new political formation has, he said, “notable people like Rafael Correa in the leadership.”
On Wednesday, in his press conference, the original founded MANA beat Correa and said that they could not be members of the party those “characters who did a lot of damage during 10 years, who persecuted, imprisoned, mistreated, kidnapped and murdered people “ (I)
