Around noon on Tuesday, October 10, 1995, the Vice President of Ecuador received a terrifying notice. The president of the supreme court of justice was about to issue a warrant for his arrest. The vice president, a mathematician and economist by profession, calculated with algebraic precision the escape from what he considered arbitrary detention. It all happened as he left his home north of Quito, boarded a vehicle where he hand-wrote his resignation letter, and drove to Guayaquil to board a plane to water banana plantations. , to a country in Central America. This is the spectacular story of the escape from alberto dahikformer Vice President of Ecuador.

Alberto Dahik Garzozi is an Ecuadorian politician of Lebanese origin who, before becoming vice-president, a position he held between August 10, 1992 and October 11, 1995, was Minister of Finance of the Christian Social Government of Léon Febres Lamb. At that time, Dahik Garzozi was around 33 years old and had returned from North America after graduating from the universities of Western Ontario in Canada and Princeton in the United States.

The young economist had ambitions for a dazzling political career and in 1988 he became a deputy to the National Congress of Ecuador for the Conservative party. After stepping down as a legislator, he proposed to Sixto Duran Ballen run in pairs for the presidency of Ecuador. Durán Ballen was a social Christian with a long career who would run for the presidency for the second time after losing it in the 1979 runoff to Jaime Roldós Aguilera. The Conservative Party and the Social Christian Party would merge as natural allies in Ecuadorian politics. But the former governor and deputy of Guayas, Jaime Nebot Saadireceived support from Febres Cordero and the issue was resolved. Durán Ballén would not be the social-Christian candidate for the presidency of Ecuador.

After this political setback which stifled the aspirations of the Duran BallenDahik convinces him of his possibilities and the conservative sector of Social Christianity splits from the party to form a new political organization, the Republican Unity Party. The new coalition was made up of Republicans and Conservatives, and its partner was Durán Ballén – Dahik Garzozi.

Dahik’s calculation was correct and in the ballot of Sunday July 5, 1992, the binomial prevailed over its adversary, the social-Christian binomial composed of Jaime Nebot Yes Galo Vela Alvarez, after winning 58% of the vote and 16 points clear of their opponents. The victory was brilliant.

However, the same did not happen with the simultaneous legislative elections where the Social Christians won 21 seats with a slight superiority of 4 seats over the Republican-Conservative coalition which won 17 out of 77. Both parties gathered were two seats away from obtaining a majority, but Social Christianity allied itself with its natural adversaries, the Ecuadorian populist party Roldosista, the left-wing Democratic Social Democrat, the Christian Democrat People’s democracy and the Marxist Democratic People’s Movement and obtained a majority of 54 seats, nominating the Christian Democrat Carlos Vallejo and the Rolando Jacob Bucaram as Legislative Speaker and Vice Speaker. This majority named Carlos Solorzano Constantin as President of the Supreme Court of Justice.

But that was not the only difficulty the weak government had to face. In 1995, a military conflict broke out between Ecuador and Peru over Alto Cenepa, a disputed territory since Ecuador declared the 1942 Rio de Janeiro Protocol inapplicable, by which the country lost to ever sovereign access to the Amazon River. This required Duran Ballén to spend long periods away from the administration of the country’s government, to travel to gain international support and to delegate presidential functions to his vice president, who was responsible for managing the economic front of the executive branch. . Dahik was in charge of 11 of the 16 government ministers.

This circumstance was taken advantage of by Alberto Dahik who was preparing his career for the following presidential elections. Duran Ballén faced the military confrontation with Peru with great leadership, the macroeconomic figures smiled on the government and the official political front was able to obtain circumstantial majorities to promote its program of legislative reforms against the overwhelming majority led by social Christianity. Even Duran Ballén personally participated in the collective elaboration of a land redistribution law with different fronts of the indigenous movement, led by Luis Macas, then president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador.

Dahik Garzozi was the natural successor to Durán Ballén. Young, diligent, technical and efficient, the Ecuadorian vice-president at the time did not count on the social-Christian backlash. Social Christianity has opened an investigation for embezzlement of expenses reserved on the account of the vice-presidency. They took the debate to the legislative plenary session of the National Congress and waited for Dahik to fail in his explanations, but the vice president conducted a masterclass on macroeconomics and government decisions that rebounded in his acceptance to the inside and outside the legislature. On October 6, 1995, the legislative plenary session of the National Congress acquitted by 39 votes for, 20 against and 14 abstentions of the charges brought against Dahik. The maneuver couldn’t have been better and Dahik came out stronger.

However, the President of the Supreme Court of Justice, close to Popular Democracy, Magistrate Carlos Solorzano Constantine signed the arrest warrant that opened the criminal case against Dahik on the same charges that were debated in the Legislative Assembly.

It is believed to have been someone from Dahik security who signed off on the information and took it away on the morning of Tuesday, October 10, 1995.. The majority led by social Christianity wanted to lock up the former finance minister and current vice-president of his government to prevent him from becoming president. At this point it will not be said whether the criminal charges were fairly or unfairly awarded, what can be said is that looking at the fine print of the story, Alberto Dahik Garzozi was a danger for the future presidential election.

It is unofficially known that the plane that took Dahik had to make a stopover in Cali, another in Panama City to refuel and resume its journey to San José, Costa Rica, where the former president was granted asylum. Politics. As the former vice president flew away, an operation of 20,000 police was looking for him across the country.

On the night of Thursday, October 12, a laconic and unspeakable president Sixto Duran Ballenthe former presidential running mate of Dahik, informed the country on a national television channel that the post of vice president had been vacated.

Others even maintain that, in the flight log, the pilot of the fumigation plane had to report that he was alone, while the vice-president was in hiding.

In the following presidential elections, the Christian Social Party also failed to win power. Jaime Nebot was beaten again this time by Abdalá Bucaram, leader of Ecuador’s Roldosista party, his partner in Dahik’s banishment. And with that begins a process of political instability, with coups and overthrows, which only stopped in 2006, but that’s another story.

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