Previous Story
Politics breaks into the National Electoral Council
Posted On 14 Aug 2018
Ecuadornews:
A return to the formula of the past. The movements and political parties are in search of the names they will propose for the conformation of the definitive National Electoral Council. They do it against time.
This, after that in the mandate for the selection of electoral counselors, issued by the Council of Transitional Participation, it was defined that the political organizations that participated in the elections of 2017, with candidates for assembly or president, may also apply.
The director of the Social Christian Party (PSC), Pascual del Cioppo, told EXPRESO yesterday that this week a thorough review of the requirements that arise in the application mandate will be made and most likely they will participate in the process.
“When the then Supreme Electoral Tribunal was conformed by the seven most voted parties in the country, there were no problems and there was adequate vigilance because each member representing a party supervised that no irregularities were committed,” said the Social Christian leader.
However, the functioning of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal until before 2008, the year in which it became the National Electoral Council, was not exempt from controversies and accusations of irregular acts and agreements. This accelerated the reforms to the mechanism of formation of the electoral body.
“But what was achieved is that the National Electoral Council was kidnapped by a single political force, Alianza PAIS, and that is what is being questioned, not the presence of the political forces in general,” said the director of Unidad Popular (UP), Geovanni Atarihuana.
This group does not believe that the candidate must necessarily belong to the UP to sponsor their application. For that reason, they have made approaches with social and professional actors that are not linked to the movement and until Friday they hope to have defined the two names that the mandate allows to postulate by social and political grouping.
Just on Friday the Council of Transitional Participation will call for the final National Electoral Council contest that could be conformed in October, five months before the sectional elections of March 2019. The registration period will end on August 28.
In the SUMA movement there will be a meeting between tomorrow and the past to define names. Assemblyman and director of SUMA, Guillermo Celi, said that the responsibility of political parties is to put on the list of candidates people who know the electoral issue, to ensure transparency regardless of the political side they represent.
Since last week the Citizen Technical Commission of Selection of the National Electoral Council was formed. This will be responsible for verifying, in a first part, that the applicants meet the requirements and do not incur any of the disabilities established in the contest. This same Commission will be responsible for monitoring that the transparency parameters are met throughout the process. (I)
