Ecuador Parliament Endorses Impeachement against Jorge Glas

The legislative body had failed to pass the motion three times before as a result of lacking the support of the top court

The Legislative Administration Council of the Ecuadorian National Assembly gave Tuesday night the green light for an impeachment trial against Vice President Jorge Glas after he was sentenced to six years in prison over corruption.

Four of the seven lawmakers that make up that body voted in favor of the motion to authorize the prosecution commission within the Ecuadorian parliament to begin the process against Glas.

Ecuador´s Constitutional Court unanimously endorsed recently the launch of impeachment proceedings against Glas. The council had failed to pass the motion three times before as a result of lacking the support of the top court.

Glas, who was also the vice president under former President Rafael Correa, will now have five days to present his defense against the impeachment to the assembly. The vice president can delegate a lawmaker to carry out his defense, which is likely to be the case given that he is under preventive detention.

Roberto Gomez, from the right-wing opposition CREO movement leading the case against the Vice president, will also have five days to present his own arguments for impeaching Glas which will be analyzed to consider whether it meets the parameters established in the constitution for impeachment.

Glas has been in detention since October as charges were brought against him over receiving bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht in return for giving the scandal-ridden firm state contracts.

Glas was elected vice-president in the second electoral round last April, with President Lenin Moreno as leader of the left-wing Alianza Pais. He served as vice president since 2013 under Correa, who has been critical of the trial against his ally, accusing the courts of many irregularities and saying that Glas is “innocent.”

Lenin ran his presidential campaign under the leftist agenda of his predecessor but has largely broken from Correa and worked to appease right-wing political and economic actors in the country.

Correa and his supporters have accused the new president of “betraying” the ideals of the ruling party AP, which was founded by Correa more than a decade ago and argue that prosecuting Glas is entirely political.