Drama in Ecuador overnight as president Guillermo Lasso, facing impeachment and possible removal from office, dissolved the legislature, bringing forward legislative and presidential elections to later this year.
Lasso was elected (at his third attempt) two years ago, on the centre-right ticket “Creating Opportunities”. But in the legislative election, held at the same time, his allies won less than a third of the seats in the National Assembly; left-of-centre groups had a large majority, although they were not united among themselves and some of them were willing to support Lasso, at least at first.
As often happens in Latin America, relations between president and legislature quickly deteriorated, and Lasso, who seems at best to have been politically inept, faced several attempts to impeach him. Finally this year a large majority voted to try him on charges of embezzlement: since the legislature is unicameral, the same body votes to impeach and then conducts the trial. But Lasso moved to the dissolution before the trial could begin.
Back in December, Pedro Castillo in neighboring Peru tried the same move: facing impeachment, he announced a state of emergency and the dissolution of the hostile legislature. His attempt, however, was a failure; the legislators refused to disperse and quickly completed the impeachment, removing Castillo from office and putting him under arrest, where he remains. He was replaced by his vice-president, Dina Boluarte, who faced a wave of protests.
An obvious difference between the two cases is that Castillo is from the left, and left-wing leaders tend to meet stronger institutional resistance than those from the right. But there’s a more important difference in the legalities. Although he denies it, there’s no real doubt that Castillo was acting outside the law: the Peruvian constitution simply doesn’t give the president the power that he claimed.
Lasso, however, appears to be acting within his rights. Mindful of the problem of deadlock between president and legislature, the drafters of Ecuador’s 2008 constitution included a provision (article 148), charmingly referred to as “mutual death” (muerte cruzada), giving the president the power of dissolution in a crisis – at the price of also facing election himself. This is the first time it’s been used. Both elections are just for the completion of the existing terms, until 2025.
In a parliamentary system, of course, there’s nothing strange about a president or prime minister using the power to dissolve parliament to resolve a political deadlock (or, often, simply for casual political advantage). But a presidential system, with full separation of powers, usually has no such provision, and it’s understandable that those who are used to such a system would see this as a disturbing and anti-democratic move.
It seems to me, on the other hand, that – as we have seen repeatedly in recent years – strict presidential systems are not really fit for purpose in the modern, partisan world. While parliamentary systems are far from perfect, they do seem to do a better job of encouraging compromise solutions rather than all-out political warfare.
Ecuadorian voters will now get to decide the rights and wrongs of the situation for themselves, which is as it should be. Lasso’s approval ratings, which started out high, had nosedived prior to his impeachment (as had Castillo’s in Peru); now, without legislative interference, he may be able to recover some support. Or, if voters think the legislature was on the right track, they can now choose a president who can work with it.
The World is Not Enough 
A major theoretical problem with presidential systems is the underlying incoherence of the concept of ‘separation of powers’ between executive and legislature on which they are supposed to be based. The theoretical concept of responsible government typical of parliamentary systems, in contrast, means political alignment of legislative and executive authority, and bringing them back into alignment if they get out of alignment. There is some use in distinguishing between executive and legislative functions, but they can’t be wholly or even mostly separated: the key example in practice is budgeting, something of first importance which has to be both an executive and a legislative function. Even in theory, however, they necessarily bleed into each other. The problem with the theory of separation of powers is that it’s an after-the-fact justification for the happenstance products of historical processes, trying to freeze into institutional permanence a temporary balance of political forces.
The muerte cruzada provision of the new Ecuadorian constitution does at least offer a mechanism which gives some hope that legislature and executive can be brought into political alignment, although not as reliably as in parliamentary systems.
A major practical advantage of parliamentary systems is that they make removing leaders from office less difficult and less traumatic than in presidential systems: in existing systems it is still not, in practice, as easy at it should be, and changes to make it easier would be improvements, but they still, in practice, have the bulge on existing presidential systems.
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Thanks J-D – My thoughts entirely. The idea of keeping a balance between legislative & executive functions sounds good in theory; I can see why Madison & the rest were attracted by it. But it just doesn’t work.
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