Party backing Ecuador’s Lasso will not field candidates in elections

QUITO (Reuters) – Ecuadorean President Guillermo Lasso’s political movement Creating Opportunities will not field candidates for the country’s early presidential or legislative elections, it said on Tuesday.

It also said it will not back other nominations or parties.

Lasso, a conservative ex-banker, last week said he would not run as a candidate in presidential elections.

Before that he had dissolved the country’s National Assembly on May 17 under a constitutional quirk known as the “two-way death” to escape an impeachment process after lawmakers accused him of embezzlement over an oil contract. Lasso has repeatedly denied the charge.

As a result of Lasso’s decision to dissolve the legislature, Ecuadoreans will go to the polls in early elections on Aug. 20 to choose a new president and elect the 137 members of the National Assembly.

If a presidential candidate does not win more than 50% of votes in the first round, a runoff is scheduled for Oct. 15.

Elected officials and the new president will only hold office until May 2025, when voting that had always been scheduled will take place.

“This is a waiting period where we will redouble our efforts in the governmental environment, but we will prepare with nobility, ideological and intellectual solvency and, above all, the principles to return in 2025,” Esteban Bernal, president of Creating Opportunities, told journalists.

Lasso has governed via decree since he dissolved the legislature last month.

Members of Creating Opportunities can vote for whoever they like in the upcoming elections, but cannot support candidates who “do not respect the constitution and the law,” Bernal said, without clarifying further.

Political parties have until June 13 to officially register their candidates.

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