First «Crossed Death» in Ecuador, Un-Balance among Powers?

Abstract

While facing an impeachment against him, that took place in the highest body of the Legislative Power, the President of the Republic of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso Mendoza, activated the two-way mechanism known as “cross death”, through which he dissolved the Congress—his interpellant—and, also, self-imposed a programmed end of his mandate as the highest authority of the Executive Power. Given this socio-political-legal scenario that the Republic of Ecuador is going through, this paper seeks to raise concerns in order to elucidate the nature, conceptual purposes and, above all, the (real) material impact of this constitutional figure, originally envisaged with the intention of achieving an absolute and total balance of powers between the Legislative and the Executive, in order to really achieve a space of collaboration and co-responsibility between these powers of the State. Then, in the context of the political crisis that the Ecuadorian people have been going through recently, has the execution of the “cross death” mechanism been a projection of the dogma of checks and balances among powers? Or has it been an abuse of the un-balance of powers created by the Constitution itself?