Ecuador Prepares to Vote on Term Limits

[Zorro]

On February 4, Ecuador will hold a referendum. The ballot features seven questions, ranging from reducing a national park’s acreage to preventing those accused of corruption from holding office. But the central item will be a question on whether or not presidential term limits should be reinstated into Constitution. The debate is the focal point of a bitter feud between the former President Rafael Correa—who has all but declared he wants to run for a fourth term in 2021—and his one-time vice president and successor Lenín Moreno, who backs a change that could bar Correa from the presidency for good.

So far, polls indicate voters will side with Moreno. In a December Cedatos poll, 67 percent of respondents expressed support for Moreno’s proposal to reinstate a two-term limit. A Perfiles de Opinion poll from the same month indicated 56 percent in favor of the measure and 29 percent against it. Meanwhile, Moreno remains popular with 70 percent approval as of late December. Correa’s support, meanwhile, fell to 26 percent in January 2018, down from the 43 percent a year earlier in the final months of his presidency.

Correa was voted into office in December 2006 and completed his third term in May 2017. Ecuadorans approved a new Constitution in 2008, which allowed a president to serve no more than two consecutive terms in office. In December 2015, Correa pushed a Congress-approved reform package that included a constitutional amendment to allow indefinite presidential reelection, asserting that term limits inhibited the citizens’ right to choose. At the time, Correa’s party, PAIS Alliance (Alianza PAIS, AP)—which he founded—held 100 out of 137 seats in the unicameral Congress, but some of his party members and allies were still wary about making the change to allow indefinite reelection. In order to secure their support, Correa agreed to a concession that the amendment would not go into effect until after the 2017 election, allowing him to enter the 2021 elections.

With Correa out, the party appointed Moreno to carry Correa’s legacy in the 2017 elections and keep PAIS Alliance in the presidency and the door open to a potential Correa return. Moreno won the presidency after a tight runoff election, with 51.6 percent of the vote over opponent Guillermo Lasso’s 48.8 percent. For his part, Correa moved to his wife’s native Belgium and initially pledged to spend Moreno’s term living there. But that promise turned out to be short-lived.

http://www.as-coa.org/articles/update-ecuador-prepares-vote-term-limits

[GatoGordo]

1. It might be interesting, but

Despite the fact that Bolivia has Constitutional term limits, Morales has decided that these Constitutional term limits violate his "human rights". He has decided that he is going to run for President into perpetuity, and despite the fact that the country had a referendum that clearly was infavor of term limits, he found a judge who agreed with him. (We can see what happened to term limits in Venezuela)

Ah, the virtues of being a Latin American "strong man". Hopefully, Ecuador has a stronger democracy that what passes for such in Bolivia and Venezuela.