Clean Elections with No US Interference

On February 7, progressive candidate Andrés Arauz won the first round in the Ecuadorian presidential contest, but without a large enough plurality to avoid a runoff on April 11 against conservative banker Guillermo Lasso. Yaku Pérez, with the Pachakutik party, came in a close third place, representing a curious blend of anti-developmentalism wedded to a neoliberal political program and support of coups against leftists in Latin America.

Pérez will not be in the runoff unless Arauz can be knocked off the ballot. The US-backed rightwing incumbent government of President Lenín Moreno, with the endorsement of Pérez, is doing its best to use questionable “lawfare” to remove Arauz.

In concert with the effort to disqualify Arauz, some internationals, including the journal NACLA, are promoting Pérez as a leftist, when he represents the opposite tendency. Pérez falsely poses as a human rights defender and environmentalist. He was an arch enemy of the former leftist government in Ecuador of Rafael Correa. He made racist statements, supported rightwing coup attempts in Venezuela and Nicaragua, the coup in Bolivia, and the “soft coup” in Brazil. He is a neoliberal in indigenous clothing who has support from the United States.

Arauz is pledged to continue Correa’s Citizen Revolution, which distanced itself from US control, terminated the US military base in Manta, fortified regional alliances such as UNASUR, and invested massively in education, roads, and public healthcare.

Grayzone journalist Ben Norton has written insightful articles on Ecuador. This has generated a backlash from an international group of academics and others opposed to the leftist candidacy of Arauz and in support of Pérez in Ecuador. They called for the “retraction” of Norton’s critical analysis. Sadly, MR Online complied. The Task Force on the Americas opposes all such censorship.

The Task Force on the Americas supports popular movements in Latin America in their struggle for self-determination and sovereignty, which usually entails the necessity to resist US imperialism.

Along with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, we call for calm and clean elections in Ecuador this April.