Understand what the “cross death” decreed by Lasso in Ecuador is

Guillermo Lasso, president of Ecuador, decreed the “cross death”, a constitutional clause with which the National Assembly is dissolved so that later elections can be called, in order to renew the Legislative and Executive Powers.

This means President Lasso can rule by decree-laws of economic urgency while elections for president and lawmakers are held in six months.

“I decided to apply Article 148 of the Constitution of the Republic, which gives me the power to dissolve the National Assembly due to a serious political crisis and internal commotion, for which I signed Executive Decree No. of legislative and presidential elections for the remaining respective periods”, said Lasso in his announcement.

The “cross death”, protected by the Ecuadorian Constitution, allows the powers to have the power to dissolve only once in the first three years of the presidential term. In April — before going down the impeachment route — Lasso had told the CNN that he did not want to enact such a measure in order not to lose the stability of the country.

As a first measure, Lasso said he signed a first economic emergency decree “to reduce taxes, strengthen the economy of 460,000 Ecuadorian families and that this will mean that around US$ 200 million will return to their homes. This decree-law will be sent to the Constitutional Court for evaluation”.

The “cross-death” measure comes a day after the start of a political trial against him in the National Assembly for his alleged participation in the crime of embezzlement, within the scope of the investigation called “Caso Encuentro”, for the alleged existence of an embezzlement scheme in at least least four public companies, accusations that have always been rejected by the president.

According to the opposition, the president did not rescind the contract between the Ecuadorian Oil Fleet (Flopec) and the Amazonas Tankers consortium for the transport of oil products, which supposedly would have represented damage to the State coffers.

The president has insisted that he is innocent and that those seeking to oust him want to destabilize the country and attack democracy. Lasso denies the existence of a structure of corruption in his Government and says that there are State institutions “concerned with overthrowing the Government”.

“All efforts of the legislature are aimed at destabilizing the government with an unfounded political judgment. At the moment, they are promoting an alleged crime of embezzlement by omission that does not exist in our legislation, with which they want to guarantee that I am politically responsible for not having acted against a corruption case”, said Lasso in his announcement on Wednesday, 17 of May.

“It is a 2018 contract, three years before I took over as president. A process without evidence, contradictory, confusing, illegal and illegitimate. It is the mechanism to destroy the president,” he said.