Quito, Sep 13 (EFE).- The president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), Leonidas Iza, criticized presidential candidate Daniel Noboa this Wednesday for calling him a Correísta and assured that “he does not understand indigenous peoples.”
Iza, who leads the indigenous movement in Ecuador, the largest social organization in the country, thus referred to the statements recently made by Noboa in an interview with a local media where he distanced himself from the list of demands presented by Conaie to the two presidential candidates. that went to the second round.
“He is tremendously wrong to place us as actors within Correismo, when we have fought against the policies carried out by (former President Rafael Correa) that have affected our territories,” said Iza about Noboa, a young businessman, who will face the second round. to the runner Luisa González.
“Where was he then? Surely studying at Harvard to tell Ecuadorians what we have to do. He has no history of struggle and does not even understand the country. We will never agree with those pronouncements of Mr. Noboa, who does not understand the indigenous peoples, and the worse they will understand plurinationality,” he added.
Iza accused Noboa, son of five-time presidential candidate Álvaro Noboa and member of one of the richest families in Ecuador, of allegedly not being up to date on his tax obligations.
Likewise, he reproached him for supporting the “Yes” to the plebiscite to stop the extraction of oil from Block 43-ITT, one of the fields that operate within the Yasuní National Park, but that the Nobis Group, of the Noboa, has capital in the large scale mining sector.
“It cannot be that I support the popular consultation, but that the Nobis Group has capital in the development of large-scale mining in this country, which is violating our rights, violating our territories and destroying them,” Iza said.
For this extraordinary electoral process, the president of Conaie was among the pre-candidates, but finally backed out amid an internal division by the leadership of Pachakutik, the political arm of the indigenous movement.
The second round is called for October 15, and the winner will complete the 2021-2025 period, interrupted by the current president, the conservative Guillermo Lasso, by invoking last May the “crossed death”, a constitutional mechanism with which he dissolved the National Assembly (Parliament), controlled by the opposition, when it was going to vote on his dismissal as the last step in a political trial.
