Sunday under high tension in Ecuador. In a very tense context of violence combined with an energy crisis, which led the government to mobilize the police and army, voters are called upon to express themselves. The referendum supported by President Daniel Noboa aims to strengthen the legislative arsenal to fight against organized crime which is plaguing the country. 20 minutes takes stock of this vote that the Ecuadorian government hopes will be crucial with Jimena Reyes, lawyer director of the Americas office of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).
In what context does this referendum take place?
Once an oasis of peace next to Colombia, the country has also succumbed to the violence of drug cartels. Jimena Reyes places “the beginning of this explosion at the beginning of 2016, when the FARC left open space in Colombia”. Covid-19 has encouraged this “reconfiguration of market players”, with “the port of Guayaquil increasingly used to export cocaine”. The number of street murders jumped by 800% between 2018 and 2023, and violence has escalated further.
In one year, five mayors have been assassinated, including three in the last month. At the beginning of August, the opposition candidate for the presidential election Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead leaving a meeting. “In this context of political instability, it was an unknown person, Daniel Noboa, son of a rich businessman, who was temporarily elected,” explains the lawyer. It places the “climax” of the violence at the beginning of the year, with the escape of cartel leaders from prisons. “There were fights in the streets and a hostage-taking on a television set,” she recalls. Furthermore, Ecuador is facing a serious energy crisis against a backdrop of corruption.
What are the government’s proposals to fight organized crime?
The level of violence was such at the beginning of January that Daniel Noboa declared a state of “internal armed conflict”. But “we cannot put soldiers on the street indefinitely to carry out police operations, the Constitution does not allow it,” explains Jimena Reyes. Hence the idea of this referendum, which is an opportunity to “legitimize the maintenance of order by the military”. The text proposed by Dianel Noboa contains 12 questions “which go in all directions, or rather go very clearly towards a security and ultraliberal regime”, denounces the director of the FIDH Americas office.
On the menu therefore, a question on the possibility for the army to carry out police operations, one on the regulation of weapons, another on “facilitating the appropriation of goods seized from cartels” by the government. Noboa also raises the question of the extradition of Ecuadorians to countries wanting to try them for their links with organized crime. But there are also “questions which have nothing to do with each other and are placed there in a very surprising way”, such as the possibility of “recourse to international arbitration to resolve commercial conflicts”, today prohibited by the Constitution, or the establishment of a “zero-hours” contract aimed at making the labor market more flexible. “There is a clear desire to dismantle Correa’s Constitution,” analyzes the lawyer.
Can this text really change the situation in the face of the entrenchment of cartels?
In the medium term, “this referendum will not change things”, believes Jimena Reyes. “Putting the military on the street without having a justice system that has the means to investigate the intellectuals who organize the cartels is a short-term solution,” she explains. More generally, she denounces a text which does not address evil at the root. “Judges, police officers and politicians receive salaries from organized crime,” she notes.
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And Ecuador is not the only country concerned. “There is an explosion of organized crime spreading to Europe since Covid-19,” according to Jimena Reyes. She goes further: “we have been acting through repression for forty years and it has achieved nothing. Why do we have a society that consumes more and more narcotics? » The lawyer wants to put forward a “transnational solution”, where the Noboa referendum “will perhaps allow him to win the elections within a year, but will not change anything”.