Ecuador held elections to the Presidency and National Assembly (the unicameral legislature) on 19 February. Conveniently-named leftist Lenin Moreno received 39.4% of the vote for the Presidency, comfortably ahead of centre-right rival Guillermo Lasso, who received 28.1%. However, victory in the first round of presidential elections in Ecuador requires a candidate to be ten points ahead of their nearest rival, and to receive 40% of the vote: obviously, Moreno did not meet the latter condition. A runoff will therefore be held on April 2.

The second round looks to be a relatively close contest, on account of third-placing centre-right candidate Cynthia Viteri (who won 16.3%) endorsing Mr Lasso and fourth-placing candidate Paco Moncayo (who won 6.7%) declaring his opposition to Mr Moreno. One poll shows Mr Lasso with a four-point lead.

However, there is no second round for the Assembly, which, as far as I can tell, is elected through party-list proportional representation with an average district magnitude of 4.2. Members are mostly elected using provinces as districts, though some large provinces are divided into multiple districts.

The Assembly elections resulted in an absolute majority for Mr Moreno’s party, the PAIS Alliance, securing 73 seats to 32 for Mr Lasso’s party (Creating Opportunities, or CREO) and 15 for Ms Viteri’s (the Social Christian Party, or PSC) out of a total of 137. In terms of votes, the PAIS Alliance won slightly less than they managed for the Presidency (39.1%), while the opposition was more divided (CREO 20.0%, PSC 15.9%).*

If Mr Lasso wins the runoff, the story will largely resemble that of Peru, and to a lesser extent Argentina; candidate wins narrow victory in second round after trailing in the first, but is in a weak position in the assembly, with the first round ‘winner’ having a majority.

Mr Lasso will be in a substantially different position to the Peruvian president, Mr Kuczynski, whose ministers are subject to the confidence of the assembly: rejection of the cabinet three times allows him to dissolve the assembly. The Ecuadorian constitution requires a two-thirds vote to impeach Ministers (Art. 131); CREO on its own would be unable to defeat such a motion.

One option that Mr Lasso has available to him is dissolution of the assembly. Article 148 provides for dissolution by the President if “in his/her opinion, it has taken up duties that do not pertain to it under the Constitution, upon prior favorable ruling by the Constitutional Court; or if it repeatedly without justification obstructs implementation of the National Development Plan or because a severe political crisis and domestic unrest.”

The National Development Plan is written by the National Planning Council, apparently headed by the President. It thus seems plausible that the President could write such a plan for his agenda, and then argue for dissolution on the basis of the opposition failing to pass bills on that agenda.

Regardless of whether Mr Moreno or Mr Lasso wins, the two results (Ecuador and Peru) would seem to call into question the logic of combining an electoral system for the assembly that can very easily give a majority to a party with less than 40% of the vote against a divided opposition with an electoral system for the presidency that could deny that party the presidency.

*The vote totals here are those for the twelve ‘national’ members of the Assembly, elected by all voters. ‘Provincial’ members, those chosen by party-list within provinces, are elected on a separate ballot. The National Election Council does not furnish overall totals for the provincial ballot, and a cursory examination shows no substantial difference between provincial and national votes.