What is happening in Ecuador and why did the Government suspend the vice president?

The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, appointed this Monday Sariha Moya as acting vice president, after his Government suspended for 150 days the vice president and ambassador to Israel, Verónica Abad, with whom he maintains a bitter confrontation and to which, in principle, presidential functions should be delegated during the electoral campaign for the 2025 elections.

Until now, Moya served as National Secretary of Planning, and even after Noboa won the extraordinary elections of 2023, she was preliminarily announced by Noboa’s team to occupy the position of Minister of Economy and Finance, a portfolio that Juan Carlos Vega finally took.

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Last Saturday it was learned that the Ministry of Labor suspended Abad for 150 days for not having presented herself within the date indicated by the Government in Ankara, where the Executive transferred her from Tel Aviv for security reasons within the conflict that is arising. in the Middle East.

Moya’s appointment took place hours after Abad, from Turkey, described as a “gross violation of the Constitution and the laws” the administrative summary that the Ministry of Labor opened against him and that has led to his suspension for five months.

In a video intervention broadcast on social networks, Abad accused Noboa on Sunday of allegedly preparing a “coup d’état” next January assuming that she will not respect the delegation of presidential functions that – according to the Constitution – is her responsibility to assume when the president must request leave for the electoral campaign in which he will seek re-election.

“They intend to disqualify me for five months for an offense not committed and without any proof, with the sole objective of preventing me from assuming the Presidency of the Republic, when the candidate president enters his campaign, in which they have already been openly involved since the beginning of his Government,” he said.

Noboa is one of the 15 candidates for the Presidency and, for the electoral campaign period, he must request leave and temporarily delegate the position to Abad.with whom he has had a bitter confrontation since even before beginning his mandate.

“Using arguments typical of a dictatorship, President Noboa, his ministers, have organizedly prepared the breakdown of the constitutional order and the evident coup d’état, which is being prepared for January 6, 2025 to take over the presidential succession and in this way pretend ensure re-election,” Abad said.

She mentioned “countless attempts” to pressure her resignation, and stressed that the suspension of her position as vice president “is a clear reflection of a Government (…) that has chosen the path of repression and fear instead of transparency and respect for the popular will”.

“The use of institutions for personal purposes and the breakdown of the constitutional order are practices that we cannot tolerate,” he said.

In his message, Abad made a call to the authorities of social control and transparency, to the social and political forces, to leaders and professionals, “to lose the fear that a misgovernment of terror has wanted to impart.”

He asked the National Assembly to supervise the actions of the Presidency, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility and of Labor for the actions against them.and the Comptroller General of the State to initiate a control process over his transfer to Türkiye from Israel.

Dressed in white and with a black ribbon on her lapel, she announced that she will denounce what happened to the international community and face the circumstances, but noted that everyone must raise their voices to “quiet the noise that organized political crime is making with my destroyed country.” “.

The decision of the Ministry of Labor came three days after the Contentious Electoral Court fined Abad $8,500, but did not suspend his political rights as requested by a complaint for having campaigned before the deadline for the 2023 elections. when she was a candidate for mayor of the Andean city of Cuenca.

The TCE is also pending resolution of the counterclaims that Abad and the Noboa Government have filed with mutual accusations of alleged gender violence, which could lead to an eventual disqualification and dismissal of the authorities involved.

Noboa and Abad maintain a political pulse that became evident at the beginning of the Government, when the ruler appointed her ambassador to Israel, from where Abad has denounced various pressures to force her to resign.