President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa. Photo: Primicias.
The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, issued a new decree for a state of emergency to combat the “serious internal commotion and public calamity, caused by the emergency in the electrical sector.”
This new state of emergency was declared on Friday, April 20, just two days before a national referendum on the Constitution and the president’s militarization policy.
With a 60-day validity, the decree provides for the mobilization of the National Police and the Armed Forces in the streets of Ecuador supposedly for guaranteeing the security of critical energy infrastructure facilities, “to prevent sabotage, terrorist attacks and other threats.”
#Ecuador| Un nuevo estado de excepción por "grave conmoción interna y calamidad pública, causada por la emergencia en el sector eléctrico", fue decretado por el presidente @DanielNoboaOk. Tendrá vigencia por 60 días. Dispone la movilización de la Policía Nacional y de las Fuerzas… pic.twitter.com/fh26k22x0F
— Elena Rodríguez Yánez (@ElenaDeQuito) April 19, 2024
Article 4 of the Constitution of Ecuador “provides for the mobilization and intervention of the National Police and the Armed Forces throughout the national territory, duly coordinated, to guarantee the security of critical energy infrastructure facilities to prevent sabotage, terrorist attacks or other threats that may affect their operation,” the decree stated.
“This state of emergency is based on the need to have adequate time to overcome the situation, combat the energy deficit, and guarantee the supply of electricity in the present, aiming for a stabilization in the immediate future,” the official document added.
President Noboa claimed that the deficit in electricity generation, that is causing more than 13 hours of blackouts every day in Ecuador, is the result of sabotage, and blamed 22 officials, among them his Minister of Energy and Mines Andrea Arrobo, whom he asked to resign. He accused all these officials of paralyzing the public sector and of treason.
Following this line, the secretary of Communication of the Presidency of Ecuador, Roberto Izurieta, stated that there are suspicions that the Mazar reservoir was emptied deliberately to worsen the energy crisis in the run up to the Sunday referendum.
Mazar is the second largest reservoir in the country in terms of capacity (410 million cubic meters of water) and the most important one because it supplies three large hydroelectric plants (Mazar, Paute-Molino, and Sopladora). Under usual circumstances, these three plants generate a total of 1,757 megawatts, equivalent to 38% of the country’s demand.
Another important reservoir for hydroelectric generation is the Paute, which is currently at 4% of its capacity.
Izurieta blamed the largest political force in the country, Correismo, for allegedly sabotaging the reservoirs, and claimed that former officials of Rafael Correa’s government (2007-2017) were involved in the case.
Noboa himself claimed that investigations into the alleged electrical sabotage identified “military objectives,” such as transnational organized crime that may even be supported by “foreign governments.” In this regard he named the Mexican narco-trafficking gang Sinaloa Cartel and the Colombian armed insurgent group FARC Dissidents.
However, according to Ecuadorian political analysts, the government’s discourse of blaming others for the power outages has not taken into account the government’s own negligence in the matter. Noboa appears to be more interested in the referendum that will take place on Sunday, which is being considered as a prelude to the 2025 presidential elections.
On April 15, 100 days after the first declaration of state of emergency due to “internal armed conflict,” 150 professors from 21 universities signed a manifesto condemning the militarization policy of the Ecuadorian president.
They said that Daniel Noboa’s militarization process, “which seeks to combat organized crime re-baptized as terrorism, is generating more violence than it intends to combat.”
Amid this situation, Ecuadorians will go to the polls on Sunday to vote on 11 questions of a consultative referendum that include some constitutional reforms and the issue of allowing foreign military to operate in Ecuador, as proposed by Noboa.
(Telesur) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/DZ
