Santiago Cuesta: “Moreno was the only one capable of dismantling the correísta apparatus”

Ecuadornews:

He claims that he receives criticism and insults every day on social networks. Santiago Cuesta Caputi received EXPRESO to explain his role in the Ministry of Government for the improvement of efficiency and optimization of the State and his personal link with President Lenin Moreno.

How is the relationship with President Moreno that leads to the optimization of the public sector?

I met Lenin Moreno when his father was a deputy and my brother Rafael also. They coincided. In the evenings, because I’ve had companies in Quito for 20 years, I went to Congress and there I established a friendship. Then, when he was running for vice president with Rafael Correa, I supported my friend Lenin with surveys-I do not charge a penny to anyone for the polls. I guided them and informed them. I was always a supporter of Lenin Moreno, not Rafael Correa. I do not deny having greeted Correa but he was not my friend.

The friendship stayed with the years and the trips?

When Lenin lived in Switzerland I saw in the polls that he was the only one who could win the elections. I traveled very often to Switzerland at that time -for a campaign I directed- and practically once a month I saw Lenin. When the time came, I helped hiring Lenin’s campaign manager: a foreigner, Yordi Segarra. Then the president proposed to me to work together from the first day of government but I have never been a bureaucrat, but when the difficulties in the economic financial part began, I decided to accept the proposal.

You were, then, a promoter of the candidacy of Lenin Moreno?

I said it, Lenin is not continuity. Do not confuse kindness with a lack of character. Lenin is a national hero because he freed us from Correa. It is Moreno’s merit, too, to free ourselves from a corrupt vice president. I told Jorge Glas that it was a heavy backpack for the candidate Moreno because he had two problems: either he was corrupt or he was inept. It could not happen without you noticing.

Guillermo Lasso would not have managed to dismantle the correísmo of the country?

It’s very simple, if Lasso won, he had to face 72 deputies from Alianza PAIS. How did Lasso do? What law would have happened? We would have Pólit de contralor, Baca Mancheno as prosecutor and Diego García as procurator. The only one capable of dismantling all the correísta apparatus of impunity was Moreno. In addition, who of the members of the Council of Citizen Participation and of the Judiciary is a Morenoist? Moreno will be remembered because he achieved the independence of Justice.

The process takes time …

We are achieving it little by little. People sometimes despair but it is ten years that we had an absolutist, monarchical, egomaniac, mythomaniac regime. We are now liberating ourselves from that without wars, deaths or repression. Also, with freedom of expression.

Dismantling is done with a cabinet with different ideological positions. How do the right and the left combine in the Government?

I do not think there’s left or right inside the cabinet. In the cabinet we all think and the one who makes the decisions, hitherto right, is President Moreno. We may have differences of ideological criteria but we do not have differences in the alternatives to take Ecuador forward. The problem is that they left the country really punctured by disability, corruption and indolence.

And the solutions are not taken under an ideology?

There is no ideology in the cabinet. There are different political positions, there are people who claim. The Minister of Health asks for resources to attend to children, the Minister of Social Inclusion asks for resources for the elderly. The pocket is one and that is why it is necessary to optimize. I receive attacks every day for that.

How’s the optimization going?

The president has asked, and he has said publicly, that we grant inefficient companies. It will be done transparently. (I)

Source: http://www.expreso.ec/actualidad/politica-actualidad-gobiernoecuador-leninmoreno-GX2303484