In recent days, the oligarchic Bonapartism of Daniel Noboa has deepened its authoritarian, anti-democratic and labor precariousness features.

By: Mario Unda and Maritza Idrobo

Savage precarization

On February 19, the Ministry of Labor approved agreement number 046 “which regulates the procedure for the authorization of shifts or special work schedules”.

The agreement includes elements of savage labor precariousness that the big bourgeoisie has been demanding for some years: it is present in the “Law of Humanitarian Support”, approved in the government of Lenín Moreno under the pretext of the COVID 19 pandemic, in the failed project “Creating Opportunities” of Guillermo Lasso, and in previous attempts of Noboa, including a popular consultation in 2024 that sought to replace the permanent contract with fixed-term and hourly contracts; the question was rejected by 69.5% of voters.

Agreement 046 establishes the elimination of the legal 8-hour workday and the payment of overtime or supplementary hours, establishing the figures of “special” shifts and schedules. The Ministry “will grant preferential processing to those requests that accredit the hiring of young people”. With this, employers are encouraged so that the new contracts assume these modalities.

On the other hand, the 40-hour working week is allowed to be distributed in any way, as long as it does not exceed 10 hours a day. With this fragmentation of the working day, the worker loses the unity of working time and the clear separation of the time he can have for himself, for his training and for his family.

Here, too, overtime or supplementary hours disappear, which translates into a reduction in workers’ income.

Although the agreement states that these new modalities will be agreed between employer and worker, this does nothing more than give free rein to the imposition of the company’s will, given the absolute disparity that exists in the capital-labor relationship.

Inexplicably, the agreement was erased from the page of the Ministry of Labor and subsequently the Minister of said portfolio stated that it was a leak, however, it is a project of interest to the government and is under discussion, all this after receiving strong criticism from unions and workers sectors.

Persecution of social protest

As was seen in September and October 2025, social protest is persecuted through inquiries, trials, spying, direct repression, freezing of bank accounts. Now the National Electoral Council has also entered the scene. Its president, Diana Atamaint, denounced the Yasunidos collective in the Electoral Litigation for alleged infractions committed during the campaign for the Yasuní consultation in 2023. The organization denied the accusations and denounced a political persecution.

On the other hand, the Attorney General’s Office has become the spearhead of the criminalization of social protest, ever since the governments decided to treat social mobilizations as if they were a crime. But on February 1 it showed that it is capable of doing so even in those moments when there are no mobilizations or protests.

It was enough that the Ecuarunari (Quichua branch of the Conaie) appointed in its congress a new governing council, headed by Leonidas Iza, for the Prosecutor’s Office to issue a threatening communiqué: “the exercise of civil rights does not cover the commission of criminal offenses and that the Ecuadorian legal system expressly differentiates social mobilization from criminal conduct, such as rebellion, sabotage, terrorism, paralysis of public services or incitement to discord, typified and sanctioned in the Organic Integral Penal Code (COIP). Within the framework of its constitutional and legal powers, the Attorney General’s Office will act with absolute firmness in the face of the possible commission of these crimes”, etc.

The threat is transparent, especially when there is growing dissatisfaction and discontent against the government.

Attacks on freedom of the press and freedom of expression

Two new events have added to the repeated attempts to control and silence opposition voices.

On January 28, an official letter from the head of the joint command of the Armed Forces instructed the commanders of the three branches to deny accreditation for military events to media and communicators who “in their opinion maintain a contrary position that affects the institutional image”.

And on February 19, the Superintendence of Companies ordered, at the government’s request, the intervention of Granasa, publisher of the newspapers Expreso and Extra, which had been among the media most strongly questioning the government of Daniel Noboa.

Control of justice

The government continues to advance in the control of the justice system. In July 2024, with official backing, Mario Godoy was named president of the Judiciary, the institution that controls and can remove judges and prosecutors. But Godoy became embroiled in a scandal over links to drug trafficking and resigned in the midst of an impeachment trial, when the ADN bloc made public the withdrawal of its support.

Then, the CPCCS (Council of Citizen Participation and Social Control), controlled by Noboa, appoints as temporary president of the Judiciary Damian Larco, an economist who was director of the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) at the precise moment when a debt of more than 90 million dollars that the Noboa Corporation held with the State vanished.

The following day the mayor of Guayaquil, Aquiles Alvarez, was arrested in the middle of a media show of humiliations, as the prosecutor’s office has been operating. Days before, the mayor had held a press conference in which he spoke out harshly about the transit of cocaine and fentanyl precursors in Ecuadorian ports and denounced the “complicit silence” of the authorities with the mafias. Alvarez was the public figure that Correism was trying to present for the 2029 presidential elections.

A coup d’état against local governments

Under the pretext of curbing “waste”, the Noboa government imposes a real coup d’état against the municipalities.

In Ecuador, local governments were renamed “Decentralized Autonomous Governments” (GAD) in the 2008 Constitution, and include Provincial Councils, Municipalities and Parish Councils and are often the result of strong political disputes, especially when the dominant force at the national level loses its control in constituencies of great population and economic importance.

On January 27, Noboa sent to the Assembly, as a matter of urgency, a project of reforms to the COOTAD (Organic Code of Territorial Organization, Autonomy and Decentralization). He intends to oblige the GADs to use “at least” 70% of their budget for investment, leaving a maximum of 30% for “current expenses” (salaries and administrative functioning). If they do not do so, the State will withhold the allocations they are required by law to receive.

The proposal seeks to place local governments under the control of the central government, erasing the political, administrative and financial autonomy recognized to them by the Constitution. In addition, this allows it to keep for itself part of the funds that correspond to the localities and eventually use them -let us say- for the payment of the foreign debt.

The approval of the law, passed by the National Assembly this August 20 with 77 votes in favor and 71 against, will result in thousands of layoffs, which is in line with the letter of intent signed by Noboa with the IMF and, above all, will affect the social, cultural, educational and health programs maintained by several municipalities, and this will seriously affect local societies and the popular sectors, which are the main users of municipal education and health services.

An additional example of subjugation of the municipalities occurred on the night of February 15, when the national government intervened Segura EP, operated by the municipality of Guayaquil, a company in charge of surveillance through cameras in that city. The government alleged acts of corruption, but the fact is that it is taking control of a surveillance that at more than one moment was uncomfortable for it, showing links between a bomb attack and people close to the government. Its most important intervention was in the case of the kidnapping and murder of the boys from Las Malvinas by members of the armed forces: it was the Segura EP videos that allowed reconstructing the truth of the crime, while the government persisted in denying it and the prosecution looked the other way.

A bludgeon to the rights of nature

The same day, the executive sent another urgent bill “for the strengthening of the strategic sectors of mining and energy”. But it is clear that, for Noboa, the way to strengthen them is to favor the depredation of nature.

For mining, the project eliminates the environmental license, lowering the hierarchy and requirements of prior authorizations. The exploration phase is extended to 15 years (on the other hand, for artisanal mining, the permits will be for 10 years, non-extendable) and something that already exists informally is officially granted: the protection of the companies’ installations by the Armed Forces.

The easing of concessions and the reduction of controls constitute a new threat to the rights of nature. It is worth remembering that several recent popular consultations have resulted in a majority in favor of putting a stop to mining and oil activities in order to defend water, land and communities.

For electric power, it is mainly a matter of facilitating and promoting the privatization of power generation, as already stated in the agreement with the IMF.

Authoritarianism run amok

Since January 2024, Noboa’s government has been turning into an oligarchic Bonapartist regime and this course has not stopped, nor has its affirmation slowed down in any way. On the contrary, in these last weeks, the pace of implementation has been accelerating again.

But it has also generated popular rejection, which adds to the discontent with the actions of a government that fails to solve the main problems affecting the majority of the population. The last two laws, those related to mining and local governments, stimulated mobilizations in several areas of the country.

It is evident that this will not stop a government that has been characterized by openly ignoring the voice of the people, as shown by its reactions to the lost popular consultations. At this moment it becomes an urgent task to advance in the struggle and to generate spaces of unity among the organizations and social movements to be able to confront the Ecuadorian version of the ultra-right.