The limitations of the Popular Consultation proposed by Guillermo Lasso

The Ecuadorian president has expressed the possibility of using this mechanism to promote his government plan. The president has no support in the Legislature

El presidente de Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, en una fotografía de archivo. EFE/Javier López

The initiative on the forthcoming popular consultation that President Guillermo Lasso has endeavored to promote will have four limits established in the Ecuadorian Constitution: it cannot alter the fundamental structure of the Constitution; it cannot change the constituent elements of the State; it cannot place restrictions on rights and guarantees, and it could not change the procedure for amending the Constitution.

The normative structure of the Ecuadorian Constitution consists of its state configuration, fundamental rights and guarantees, public administration and reform procedures. The constituent elements of the Ecuadorian State are its republican and decentralized form, its sovereignty, its national symbols and its capital city. Restrictions on constitutional rights and guarantees are those that impair their exercise. The procedure for the reform of the Constitution are the channels established for this purpose: amendment, referendum or constituent convention. In short, none of this is allowed to be consulted.

Given the growing controversies that the Ecuadorian government has experienced before the Ecuadorian national legislature, President Guillermo Lasso announced that he is working on a number of issues for people to decide in a popular consultation.

This is the result of the recent rejection and legislative archiving of the presidential project to attract investment, which aimed to generate jobs and promote domestic and foreign investment in the country, according to the spokesmen of the Ecuadorian government.

President Lasso claims that he is prevented from exercising the powers of government empowered by law, that he will seek constitutional mechanisms to govern without legislative power and that one of these mechanisms is popular consultation. The Ecuadorian president has stated that he considers it to convene it with the intention of asking the electorate about what “the Assembly has refused to deal with.”

The Constitution of Ecuador allows the President of the Republic to order the National Electoral Council (CNE) to convene a popular consultation on matters that the ruler deems appropriate.

President Lasso has not yet announced what the topics of the call will be, but these could include the recently rejected investment bill and labour law reform to facilitate access to employment, in addition to other issues that have been discussed in the country such as the reduction of the number of legislators and the introduction of a bicameral legislative system, the modification of the National Council of the Judiciary, the modification or even the possible elimination of the Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control.

That these amendments alter the fundamental structure of the Constitution or the constituent elements of the State will be the subject of analysis by the Constitutional Court in a previous opinion.

The recently appointed Minister of Government and Policy Management, Francisco Jiménez, predicted the commitment to the plebiscite channel in the event that channels of understanding with political and legislative actors were not restored. The Secretary of State stated that the areas of interest of the regime in the possible call for a popular consultation are: employment generation, citizen security and the change of political structures.

Ecuadorian electoral law establishes that the Executive will be able to propose a consultation on a bill that has been denied by the legislature, so that the article of the rejected legislative bill on investment attraction could be consulted and that would be shelved on March 22.

According to Click Report, which consulted 760 people in Quito and Guayaquil, 67% of respondents rejected the filing of President Lasso's proposed investment law before the National Assembly.

The last popular consultation was held in 2018, with the beginning of the governing term of former President Lenín Moreno, which focused on repealing the indefinite presidential re-election introduced by former President Rafael Correa during the last months of his term. For this plebiscite event, the National Electoral Council (CNE) approved a budget of $48.3 million for its execution, with an electoral roll of 13.1 million voters.

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