By Yury Garcia
GUAYAQUIL (Reuters) – Ecuador’s government said in a statement on Wednesday that a request by Vice President Veronica Abad that the country’s electoral court remove President Daniel Noboa from his post is an attempt at a “coup”.
Noboa and Abad have had a fraught relationship since the beginning of the former’s term in November 2023.
Abad has been based in Tel Aviv since last year, where Noboa sent her to support peace efforts between Israel and Hamas.
According to Abad’s court filing, seen by Reuters and which also names government vice minister Esteban Torres, foreign minister Gabriela Sommerfeld and presidential advisor Diana Jacome, Noboa has unfairly sidelined Abad and damaged equal representation of women in his government.
Noboa “has reduced my participation as a woman in political decisions of state, attempting to remove me totally from the country’s public life almost to the point of disappearing the political institutional figure of the vice president,” the filing said.
Her role has been a “punishment”, Abad added.
“I have been practically banished to another country in the middle of a war, they have removed the security that I deserve,” the complaint added.
The alleged acts of “gendered political violence” should end in the removal of Noboa and the others from their posts, a ban on their holding public office for four years and a fine of 70 monthly minimum wages, Abad’s filing said.
In a statement the government called Abad’s filing a “clumsy attempt at destabilization which shamelessly comprises a clear attempt at a coup.”
Noboa, who is serving a truncated 17-month term and has focused his administration on improving spiraling security and crime, announced this month he will run for a full term in a February election.
(Reporting by Yury Garcia; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb)
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