Ecuadorian Vice President Veronica Abad filed a formal complaint with the country’s electoral court this month asking for the removal of President Daniel Noboa. Noboa, who is calling the move an attempted coup, is not likely to be removed. But this ugly fight between the country’s president and vice president is going to last for months to come and will shape Ecuador’s presidential election to be held next February.
The political dispute between Noboa and Abad is only the most recent dramatic turn in Noboa’s brief nine months in office. The two were elected as president and vice president in late 2023, after then-President Guillermo Lasso cut his own term short and called for snap elections. In January, a dramatic spike in already rampant gang violence led Noboa to declare a “state of internal conflict” with the organized crime groups operating in the country. In February, Noboa almost provided weapons to Ukraine until Russian President Vladimir Putin used a boycott of the country’s bananas to pressure him into reversing his policy. In April, Noboa set off a major diplomatic incident when he ordered Ecuadorian security forces to storm the Mexican Embassy to seize former Vice President Jorge Glas, who had sought asylum there to evade arrest and prosecution on corruption charges. Also in April, Noboa emerged with mixed results from a referendum he had called, winning on the security-focused questions but losing on two economic-focused questions, showing potential vulnerability that could resurface in his campaign to win a full term in office in February.
Throughout it all, Noboa and Abad have been at odds with each other. The two had a still unspecified dispute late in the 2023 election campaign and haven’t spoken since the second round of that ballot. After he became president, Noboa issued a decree naming Abad his “peace ambassador” to help mediate the Israel-Gaza conflict, sending her to Tel Aviv in what amounts to exile. She has not returned to Ecuador at all in 2024.