On 7 February 2021, the citizens of Ecuador traveled to the polls to elect a new president and National Assembly to carry the country out of its most severe crisis in a generation.
Between violent crackdowns on IMF protests in 2019 to persistent threats to cancel the presidential election, Ecuador’s democracy was on the brink in the run-up to the 2021 election.
On 19 July 2020, the Ecuadorian electoral authorities refused, without justification, to register multiple parties including Fuerza Compromiso Social (FCS), the political party of PI Council member Andrés Arauz: an illegal, brazen suspension of democracy in Ecuador.
This illegal maneuver was not an isolated event. Rather, it was an alarming advancement of a strategy of political persecution against the progressive forces of Ecuador — and the acceleration of legal warfare (‘lawfare’) against political opposition in the region of Latin America, more broadly.
Long before election day, the Progressive International mobilized its network of parliamentarians to fight against this lawfare tactic — and won. By tracking this illegal attack on the Ecuadorian constitution and free democratic participation, the PI helped clear the way for candidate Andrés Arauz to run in the presidential elections.
But the threats to the democratic process did not stop there. In January 2021, the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE) — the electoral council charged with administering the elections across all precincts — came under attack by the Tribunal Contencioso Electoral (TCE), which tried to remove four of the five leading members of the Council just days before the election. The two bodies had disputed the right to make final determinations on the contents of the ballot — an extended dispute that jeopardized the institutional authority to ensure confidence in the final vote count.
That is why the Progressive International sent a delegation of observers to Ecuador: to ensure the integrity of its elections, and to help fortify the right to popular sovereignty. Working closely with Ecuador’s electoral authorities, the PI delegation traveled across scores of precincts on election day and monitored the process of ballot counting in the hours after they close.
The scrutiny of the PI delegation — in particular, our data scientists and legal experts — was crucial to ensuring a fair vote count. Following the first round of elections in February, the discontented 2nd and 3rd place candidates, CNE members, and inexplicably, the OAS, attempted an unprecedented "recount" that threatened to derail the democratic process — illegitimately negotiated outside the bounds of electoral procedure. Our delegation was clear: there was no legal basis for this "recount", and no evidence of fraud to justify it. Indeed, we had the data to back up our claims and were proven correct. No evidence of any systemic fraud was ever found.
In time for the April run-off, we mobilized a second delegation to Quito. We fought off an attempt by the Office of the Prosecutor to seize control of the electoral system and its data, and defended the democratic process from start to finish in what was widely regarded as a free, fair, and transparent contest.
However, weeks of entertainment the false cries of fraud severely and irrevocably damaging public trust of the democratic process — changing the political landscape for the second round. It took great effort and pressure by PI to ensure even the most basic technical elements of electoral observation — free political participation and a fair vote count. But we could not stop the sowing of lies and distrust in favor of some political forces — fueled by an unaccountable corporate media and abetted again by the OAS.