The debate on the request, carried out during three days with the participation of 109 of 137 members of the plenary session, ended with the vote of all parliamentarians present in the session, among whom 80 voted in favor of the impeachment (out of 92 votes needed), 48 were against and nine abstained, with no blank ballot.
The last debate lasted nearly nine hours, and it was marked by the President’s announcement to break the talk with Leonidas Iza, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), the organization that convened the national strike in force for 16 days against the neoliberal measures announced by the Government, to which several social sectors were joined.
With no speech limit, each assembly member had up to 10 minutes to present their points of view in the process promoted by Patricia Nuñez, of the Union for Hope Alliance (UNES).
Many of the speeches coincided in denouncing the criminalization of the protest and the police and army repression, unleashed during the first two weeks of rallies against those participating in the strike, especially in Quito, epicenter of those demonstrations.
During the session, in which 92 votes were needed for the impeachment, the president had the possibility of exercising his right to defense, but he decided to present his evidence in writing, through Fabian Pozo, legal adviser to the Presidency, which was widely criticized in the plenary session.
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