Ecuador’s president, Guillermo Lasso, has ordered that senior security ministry officials will not appear before Ecuador’s National Assembly to give an account of the security crisis, Security Minister Diego Ordóñez has revealed.
The decision was communicated to the president of the National Assembly, Virgilio Saquicela, on October 31, as explained by Ordóñez and reported by the Ecuadorian newspaper ‘El Universo’. Ordóñez argued that these subpoenas seek to expose the ministers to «harassment».
In recent days there has been a wave of criminal violence in the provinces of Guayas, Esmeraldas and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas caused by gangs related to organized crime.
Lasso «gave the order to all ministers and secretaries of the security area not to attend the convocations to the commissions of the National Assembly, because they do not offer the guarantees for the information provided to be treated responsibly», said Ordóñez this Monday in declarations to Radio Única radio station.
According to Ordóñez, the objective of the legislative benches would be «to expose the officials to be harassed, instead of sitting down to discuss the decisions to be taken». «Or do they want to lead to the Assembly designing public policies that are the responsibility of the President of the Republic? They do not realize that this (revealing information) could mean an affectation to the security of the State», he added.
«I am pointing out the facts. It cannot be that at this moment, the ministers of the security area, that President Lasso, that me, are threatened every day with impeachment because we are accused of being politically responsible for a crime of femicide,» he has pointed out in reference to the murder of lawyer María Belén Bernal at the hands of her husband at the National Police Academy on September 11.
