{"id":13971,"date":"2023-04-18T05:13:40","date_gmt":"2023-04-18T05:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/ecuadors-president-lasso-vows\/"},"modified":"2023-04-18T05:16:11","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T05:16:11","slug":"ecuadors-lasso-vows-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/ecuadors-lasso-vows-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecuador&#8217;s Lasso vows to dissolve congress if it tries to impeach him -FT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(Reuters) -Ecuador&#8217;s President Guillermo Lasso said he would dissolve congress and call early elections if he does not muster enough support among legislators ahead of a potential impeachment hearing, the Financial Times said on Tuesday. <\/p>\n<p>The comments, in an interview with Lasso, come a day after lawyers representing him asked lawmakers to declare the impeachment hearing inadmissible, denying the accusations of embezzlement against him.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Correct, correct. That\u2019s what I declare,&#8221; the newspaper quoted Lasso as saying in response to a query whether he would invoke a constitutional clause known as &#8220;mutual death&#8221; to force elections for both his own job and a new congress.<\/p>\n<p>The constitution allows Lasso to call elections for both his post and the assembly instead of facing hearings, in a procedure widely described as &#8220;mutual death&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>Opposition lawmakers in Ecuador&#8217;s National Assembly have pushed for such hearings since last month. The Supreme Court gave the green light for the hearings, which could end in Lasso being censured or dismissed.<\/p>\n<p>Opposition lawmakers will need 92 votes from the 137 members of the assembly to find Lasso guilty if the process reaches the final stage.<\/p>\n<p>The embezzlement accusations concern a shipping contract for crude oil between public company Flopec and private sector business Amazonas Tanker Pool Company LLC. <\/p>\n<p>Last month, an Ecuadorian opposition lawmaker said there was compelling evidence to present against Lasso at an impeachment hearing, including irregularities in the crude oil shipping contract.<\/p>\n<p>The oversight committee will begin hearings for the impeachment trial this week. <\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Jyoti Narayan in Bengaluru; Writing by Isabel Woodford; Editing by Tom Hogue and Clarence Fernandez)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/ecuadors-president-lasso-vows\/file-photo-costa-ricas-president-chaves-meets-with-ecuadors-president\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3H03T-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3H03T-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Reuters) -Ecuador&#8217;s President Guillermo Lasso said he would dissolve congress and call early elections if he does not muster enough support among legislators ahead of a potential impeachment hearing, the Financial Times said on Tuesday. The comments, in an interview with Lasso, come a day after lawyers representing him asked lawmakers to declare the impeachment [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":13972,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-13971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3H03T-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13971"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14029,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13971\/revisions\/14029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}