The National Assembly fulfills the prophecy that a great patriot and gentleman, Dr. Raúl Clemente Huerta, whom I greatly appreciated, made to me when I was, back in 1988, elected national deputy for the Conservative Party. The “old fighting cock” told me: “Dear Alberto, I sincerely congratulate you. However, when you get to Congress (as it was called back then) you will feel a great frustration for the quality of your fellow legislators. But take comfort in the fact that the next Congress will be worse”. That has unfortunately been the evolution of the National Assembly.
In fact, my decision to participate in active politics came after the longest political trial in Ecuadorian parliamentary history, which lasted five weeks, in which, as Minister of Finance in 1986, I was taken to Congress for the economic measures taken by the Monetary Board. As the president of the Board was not subject to impeachment, then I was the one who received the venomous discharge against the Government of the day. In that impeachment trial, I had talked about the huge fiscal deficit of billions of sucres at that time, given that the price of oil had fallen to 6 dollars per barrel. A legislator who had not attended the session brought the next day a copy of Diario EL UNIVERSO, which picked up my intervention, and shouting said: “The minister says there is no money, because here he has billions in the deficit”. This because the headline of the news, which is the only thing he should have read, said: “The budget has a deficit of so many billions of sucres”. Then the legislator concluded: “Let him take the money out of the deficit”.
To general laughter, that legislator later learned the meaning of the word deficit. Seeing the poor intellectual level and knowledge of economics of the Assembly, in general, with a few exceptions, I decided then that it was my civic duty to join politics to try to do something for the country.
Today we have one more example of what the Assembly is all about. Faced with the electricity crisis, the Assembly demands the Government to act and solve it. That is to say, the Assembly asks that with divine powers the Minister, the President and CNEL make it rain on the dams and hydroelectric power plants.
They do not call for national unity to say that this is an accumulated problem, due to poorly built hydroelectric plants, overpriced, oversized, with terrible ecological risks (such as Coca-Codo Sinclair) and that they are in only two river basins. Nor do they say that there are already several years of lack of investment because the State does not have resources because they go to subsidies, both for fuel and pensions and many more. That the budget takes the liquidity of Petroecuador, CNEL, CNT and all the institutions due to the structural problem that exists in the public finances. The Assembly does not say this, nor does it say that all Ecuadorians must unite to solve the structural problems that are taking us to the edge of a giant precipice. This is not said, nor will it be said, because “it is not political”. Therefore, the country will continue to worsen and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. (O)
Source: eluniverse.com
