 Okay. Okay, so we're recording now. So welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America. Code pinks weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. We broadcast every Wednesday on code pink YouTube normally for 30pm Pacific 730pm Eastern. Today, we are speaking with you live from Kiko Ecuador. And I am joined by code pinks Leonardo flores Leonardo and I are both Latin America campaign coordinators for code pink and we are currently in Kiko. Having served as international election observers on Sunday, April 11, which was the second round of presidential election second and final round of the presidential elections here in Ecuador. It was a runoff between the neoliberal candidate Guillermo lasso and the citizens revolution candidate on the base arouse results were massive 52.51% arouse 47.49%. So welcome Leo, let's talk a little bit about what happened on Sunday. Thanks, Terry. It's good to be here. Yeah, I mean, I think as a code pink delegation electoral observer observation delegation. We didn't witness any sort of regularities and nothing major of course, I would say that the vote itself on Sunday and the vote count on on Sunday, April 11 was fair, you know, there was no fraud involved at all on that day. The problem, of course, comes before the vote in the months leading up to up to the, you know, first round and then in between the first and second rounds. There were many things that were that were indicative of an unable uneven playing field between the various candidates. And I think that really is the determining factor in the loss for under the house of the progressive onus party. Otherwise, I think he might have been able to win. So onus is a is a new party or basically a coalition of parties. It was running as an inheritor of Korea Eastmo or Raphael president Raphael Korea's citizens revolution project for development of the people of Ecuador versus the capitalists of Ecuador. And I totally agree with you there was a lot the elections on Sunday were very clean it was a very normal peaceful election process. And of course there's all the intangible things all the campaign issues all the law fair issues that observers are not witness to on the actual day of election so all those factors that run up to the day of election all those factors that comprise who candidates can and cannot be and what their campaign looks like. In the house, he was denied the use of Korea's image. During the campaign, Korea himself was denied running as a rouses vice president, and Korea's party, Alianza payees no longer exists. So onus was created. So there were for our for our viewers. For our audience. There's a lot of background that led up to the results and then I think in one way I think you would agree with this in one way it's amazing what a rouse was able to accomplish since last fall 47% with all those strikes against them. And yet, let's so let's talk a little bit about, I mean, I think to understand the was to understand the results we actually have to go back four years to 2017 when again, he was the candidate. And the candidate for Correismo this movement behind former president Rafael Correa, who was in power for 10 years 2007 to 2017 he brought economic growth to Ecuador, political stability, prior to Correa. He had had had seven presidents in 10 years and an economy that was so battered that you saw massive amounts of migration outside of Ecuador. So moreno is kind of seen as the inheritor of this movement Correismo but as soon as he wins those elections. It becomes a total bait and switch almost like a silent coup. What and what happened was that moreno basically adopted all of the policies and programs that were put forward by his opponent in those same elections. So he starts this kind of neoliberal push and not push for austerity, and he begins destroying the institutions that have been created during the during the during the Correa years. And, you know, the first thing that one of the first whistleblowers of everything was the vice president or the glass he blows the whistle he says look, the president is now on the side of the bankers he's completely betrayed the people's movement. And for his for doing this for taking this stance. Jorge glass is one of the first people to face political persecution in this country under the moreno government, and he's still in jail today he's one of the most important political prisoners in Latin America only we don't hear much about him. And then the campaign against Jorge glasses then it becomes expanded to and they start going after other leaders of Correismo including Rafael Correa himself, who has something like 30 cases, pending against them. I mean, some of them are totally absurd and one of them he's accused of psychic corruption or excuse me psychic influence influence to make it to make other people corrupt. And so that's kind of the lead up to these elections, where you had this betrayal of the citizens revolution as the Correismo is also called by Lenin Moreno, who adopts all of gay and molasses policies and then in October 2019 that people couldn't take it anymore there was a massive uprising in Ecuador. That was brutally repressed by Lenin Moreno 11 people died in Guillermo Lasso, you know, cheered this on and when the main kind of the spark that lit the flame was an elimination of fuel subsidies stemming from a deal with the IMF that kind of harkens back to the days of the Washington consensus with in post austerity and deregulation, and really an eroding of labor rights. And so, yeah, as you said, you know, Correismo tried to recover from this they put forward this really young candidate, who's 36 years old but he's also a brilliant economist he had already been director of the central bank. He was one of the people kind of responsible for that, the way that Ecuador had managed to weather the storm of the collapse and oil prices in 2015 because 50% of Ecuador's revenue comes from oil. So, as you said, the actual original party alliance at base was no longer there they tried to create a new party but were refused by the CNE, then they finally kind of got this small party to adopt and the rest of the house as the as the state. And the kind of lawfare and the campaign, you know, ugliness didn't stop there there was so much fake news going against under set out. He was accused of wanting to D dollarize it. Ecuador Ecuador has been using the US dollar for about 20 years it was the only thing that stabilized the economy, and at house understands this and he kind of supports this he, you know they're pros and cons but it has stabilized the economy. There was also this crazy allegation that under said I was as financed by left wing gorillas in Colombia. This was disproved by an ornithologist because they use this video that was very obviously taped in southern Ecuador where this bird lives that doesn't live in Colombia and an ornithologist picked it out of the video, the sounds and kind of destroyed that narrative but I think the damage was done, especially because there were so you know the media here in the corporate and it was completely on the side of the banker. It was one of the richest people in the country, and I didn't really have a fair shot going into these elections. Now, let's talk a little bit about who raised the house is because you and I went to a rally third last Thursday evening which was Thursday was the last legal day to campaign. And we went to basically a closing rally for the Rouse campaign and talk to a lot of people there. One of the one of the gentlemen I spoke with older, my age older. One of the key enticements for voting for a Rouse for him was the fact that the candidate was 36 years old. That was and an economist both of those things was. So the youth, the representing a new generation new face, new approach to things was very appealing to a lot of people. And yet this older neoliberal banker who has run now three, four times and finally one is going to be the new president of Ecuador. Yeah, and I think, as observers we talked to a lot of voters after they they voted and to kind of hear out what, you know, what how they felt about these elections. Well, nobody has confidence in in Ecuador's electoral system. Voter after voter said, you know, oh, I'm going to I'm going to voting for lasso. I mean, we were in a heavily lasso area. They said I'm going to vote for lasso but I think they're going to steal the elections from us. And, and, you know, yeah, and voters also talked about they were going to vote for lasso because he represented change. And that was really striking to me because lasso has basically been the shadow president for the past four years. So the lasso campaign managed to make it seem like moreno was actually a continuation of Correa, and that house would be a continuation of moreno and moreno was widely wildly unpopular he has somewhere between four to 7% approval ratings. So that was a kind of a really big deal that that the lasso campaign was able to distance itself from moreno and actually push house and kind of wedding to moreno. And that's really a result that as I was mentioning earlier of this, the work the media had done the corporate media. And social media as well really I mean in the days, you know, just prior to the election. So, and lasso talking points for trending here in Ecuador and there was very little to suggest that out, you know, he even had a major media social media presence. And really I think that's part of a kind of these troll farms that we've been seeing employed by right wing, you know, politicians throughout Latin America, you know, whether it's Facebook, Twitter or other social media accounts that they have, basically these centers with, you know, based bots basically, you know, pushing their this narrative. And so I think lasso was able to capitalize quite a bit on that, and that house, you know, unfortunately their campaign didn't have an answer. Let's, let's talk about two things. What, what did you and I hear, we attended a lot of auxiliary meetings we were we attended a lot of formal CNE meetings, basically for training and, you know, what's unique to Ecuador things we needed to on on election day, but we also attended quite a few auxiliary meetings. Pre election day and post election day. What do you think are the most important things the arouse campaign, learn from this but not the, not just the arouse campaign, but the movement the citizens revolution, the whole philosophy that was brought to the arouse campaign. Yeah, I mean, I think the primary reason at us lost is what we've already discussed how the level playing field was uneven. But one of the other big factors was this kind of schism between Conai the confederation of indigenous nationalities of Ecuador, and the citizens they'd been at odds for years and really there was kind of bad blood. I mean, the head of Conai had said he would never even sit down to speak with Rafael Correa, but he was open to speak to under a set house and he actually endorsed under a set house just about a week before the election. Unfortunately, it was too little too late and so you have this big block of voters, many of whom are on the left because you know this this indigenous confederation isn't fully left but it's kind of a big tent of various organizations. And but many of them do belong to the left. And it has this this Conai also has a political wing called Pachacutik. And Pachacutik the candidate came in third in place in the runoff elections that were held earlier this year. He's a guy who talks a big game about eco socialism and women's rights, but he's very much in the Limeo liberal camp. He supported Lasso in 2017. He supports this deal with the IMF. That's really going to cripple harm Ecuador's economy over the next decade, perhaps. So, because of this schism you had a lot of voters vote null or blank. So an Ecuador voting is compulsory obligatory, but so voters who don't like any of the candidates either leave their vote blank or they spoil their ballot which is called the null vote. In the first round of the election out of 13 million voters 1.3 million voted either null or blank. In the second round that number grew to 1.9 million. So you had a 6000 vote increase in the invalid votes, when the difference between lasso and a house in the second round was 400,000 votes so that also played a very key role in this. And, you know, I think going forward at the challenge for the left in Ecuador is going to, you know, find a is having finding a way for Conai and the citizens revolution to work together but not only that I think the citizens revolution has to do a lot of work in terms of building its social base in terms of, you know, training, you know, leaks local leaders to become national leaders and local leaders to be able to organize more efficiently. I think there was a lack of emphasis on that. And in some ways we can understand it because Correísmo prior to Sunday, April 11 had won 14 elections in a row. So, you know, they were pretty confident that what they were doing was working but unfortunately, you know, everything has changed in the past four years in terms of the social relations in Ecuador because of this austerity and of course the pandemic. We can't talk about these elections without mentioning the pandemic where Ecuador has been one of the worst performers in the world. You know, we walk around the city here and it's really so quiet. It's very, very quiet. I mean, it's very clear that there's an economic crisis and the pandemic on top of that and then people are just, you know, they don't know what to do. It's very lots of challenges that Ecuador faces right now. There's two things I want to just interject for the audience just technical things about the elections that are unique and kind of a curiosity from those of us from the States. You mentioned that voting is compulsory. So by law, people do have to vote and elections are held on Sunday so that people can come come form to the law. So you can start voting as a 16 year old 1617 until your 18th birthday you can participate in the elections it's optional, but once you are legally 18, you are a full adult under the law and you are required to vote. So there is a large participation of Ecuadorans living in the diaspora, they vote, they are also allowed to hold a seat in the National Assembly, so that so they can not just vote, but they can participate in the government, So those are two really unique things to Ecuador that I found really compelling and very encouraging to get young people to start voting at 16 I thought that was a really fascinating way to start pulling people into the to the process. And I do think it's great that that migrants have us are going to have a say in their National Assembly. Another curious thing is that they split the voting into kind of men and women so you go into a polling center, and then the polling tables themselves are either reserved for men or women, and there's kind of a they know each split up into different and we asked several people why and the main reason seems to be that this way women can feel more comfortable voting because, you know that way you prevent men from, you know, being kind of aggressive or harassing them in line and kind of intimidating them into voting for a certain candidate. So, for us it was kind of unique but but I think the people that Ecuador really support that. So, let's, why don't we wrap up with talking about what Sunday's election results could possibly mean for the region. And then also in one of our auxiliary meetings with the Council General, Venezuela we kind of had a debrief yesterday, and the we talked about the Asia Pacific Rim, and as being of what the results of Sunday's elections, how they will affect the Asia Pacific Rim and I still, you know, foolishly sitting principally having lived in California look, you know west across specific and think well the Asia Pacific Rim is China, Japan, you know, but of course the Asia Pacific Rim is California and Chile also, and we have elections. So, let's talk a little bit about the potential regional repercussions of Sunday's results. Yeah, I mean, it would be the America Pacific Rim in this case. Exactly. Yeah, that's correct. So, yeah, I mean, I'm interested as it made it clear that if he were to win he was going to reinstitute Ecuador into UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations and into CELAC, the Community of Latin American Caribbean States which are two multilateral organizations that are really served aimed to serve as a counterweight to the OAS, the Organization of American States. The OAS can only really be understood as a tool of the State Department as a way for the US to get its way in all of the hemisphere. And so the CELAC was created specifically to counter that and UNASUR was created to serve as kind of the starting point for greater South American integration. It was kind of the idea was for South America to become almost like the EU, slightly differently organized of course. And then when Moreno came into power he withdraws Ecuador from UNASUR. Unfortunately, the headquarters of UNASUR is in Ecuador. So the organization took a big hit. And what we heard from an expert here was that if UNASUR had still been, you know, going strong when the pandemic hit, it would have saved thousands of lives throughout South America because the governments would have been able to coordinate health policies together. And the governments would have been able to form a block to buy vaccines together, which would have been very important. Here in Ecuador, they're just starting the vaccines. There's actually several scandals about vaccines right now. So unfortunately, this decline in UNASUR has actually caused deaths. And Lasso is not going to return to UNASUR. In fact, Lasso is going to continue this policy of attempted regime change in Venezuela. One of the first people to congratulate him was the so-called Interim President of Venezuela, Juan Guadal, and Lasso kind of responded and invited him to his inauguration. And in terms of the Pacific, I think, you know, this is kind of a plan by the United States to have this kind of a free trade area all along the Pacific coast. And so Ecuador is now firmly in the camp that will very likely sign this free trade agreement. Of course, Colombia, and then next year, or this year, rather, we have upcoming elections in Peru and Chile. And so those are going to be very key in geopolitically to see what happens. I think if, you know, some of the sail, the wind was taken out of the sails of the kind of resurgence of the pink tide. The pink tide refers to this period in the early 2000s, when you had progressive government after progressive government take power throughout Latin America, then it kind of died away in the 2010s in part because of U.S. pressure and coups, of course. And with the Bolivian elections last year, we thought we would see a resurgence of the pink tide. Ecuador, the loss here now kind of, you know, makes that a little harder to achieve, but of course we have Lula in Brazil, most likely being the candidate next year, and other left-wing candidates in many other countries. So a lot, a lot's going to be at stake in the next elections here in South America. Well, we've got a lot of work to do. In helping lift these voices and people looking to change and doing something more socially constructive with their economies and their governments. On the Pacific Rim, we also have Nicaragua presidential elections in November. So Nicaragua, Chile, Brazil. Who else in November? Honduras. So a lot, a lot, we could be looking at a really quite different and exciting region by the end of this year. Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to let you go and people can see the sun is starting to set here in Quito. I just kind of wanted all of you to see we actually are here. The mountains are particularly beautiful. Also, to remind all of you that this is what the F is going on in Latin America. We broadcast every Wednesday, 430 p.m. Pacific 730 p.m. Eastern on code pink YouTube and also be sure to catch code pink radio every Thursday morning 11 a.m. Eastern 8 a.m. Pacific on WBAI New York City and WPFW Washington D.C. Both Pacifica radio stations. So thank you again, Leo. It's been a pleasure to be working here on the ground with Keto and Keto with you for the past week. Likewise, Terry, thanks so much. Okay, thank you. Bye everyone.