2024-07-28 23:41:20
The legal system in the country is completely chaotic and politicized. Businessmen view the law with distrust and investments to generate quality employment are not forthcoming.
Between January and March 2024, according to the latest balance of payments report of the central bank of Ecuador$78.3 million arrived Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)). That’s $27 million in average investment per month.
In addition, during the first quarter of this year, total investment, including that of national entrepreneurs, fell by 1.3%.
Ecuador needs investment to grow and generate employment. According to the president of the Guayaquil Chamber of Commerce, Miguel Ángel González, at least $42 billion in investments would be needed to generate quality employment for the nearly 6 million Ecuadorians who are in the country. unemployment and informality.
In this scenario, the question is why investment does not come to the country; why the businessmenlocal and foreign, do not bet on the Ecuadorian economy
Fabián Corral, a lawyer and doctor of jurisprudence, points out that one of the reasons is that Ecuador has a normative systema legal system that is “absolutely chaotic,” which generates distrust and discourages growth and development.
The businessman distrusts the laws in Ecuador
The regulatory complexity and the legislator’s desire to exhaust the subject in one or several articles, cause tangled lawsconfusing, even difficult to apply. This makes the entrepreneur look with fear or suspicion at the regulations
“This is a fundamental psychological problem in Ecuador. Businessmen sometimes fear the law. That is not right. The law should inspire enthusiasm in businessmen, but that is what it does not do,” Corral said.
According to Corral, the legal disorder in Ecuador is seen, for example, in the fact that there are rules that should not be in the Constitution, but are.
Furthermore, there is a scheme of perversion of the normative system, through the political recourse to organic laws.
“Here, organic laws are passed for everything, moving away from the constitutional precept that establishes that organic laws can only be passed when it comes to directly developing some constitutional precepts or establishing or structuring state institutions,” he added.
Las organic laws have become a political businessThe Assembly has become the center where power is strengthened by creating organic laws for everything, which complicate the development of society as much as possible, so that politicians can then present themselves as the saviors of the mess they themselves caused.
Politicians win and society loses with legal chaos
Corral stressed that as a country what we have done is strengthen the political position of the Assembly to the detriment of society.
“We depend on the votes of the Assembly “in order to reform something that should not be so complex to reform, and even more so in labor matters. In labor matters, laws have to be absolutely dynamic, they must follow life, not the other way around. But, in Ecuador we have created a number of anchors, almost immovable, through the laws of the organic ones,” said Corral.
Ivonne Núñez, Minister of Laboracknowledged that the chaos described by Corral is real. He even gave as an example that the Assembly has come to present, for example, a project of Organic Law on the Regulation of Teleworking.
“So tomorrow we will have an organic bill of all the working modalities And that is crazy. This is the Ecuador of law-making,” said Núñez.
Corral said that if anything affects legal security, it is the overabundance of regulations, the regulatory disorder and the lack of logic in the structure of the legal system.
“There is an immense irresponsibility of the political class. Unfortunately, the voting system operates here, so the legal system in Ecuador is completely chaotic,” he added.
During a recent interview with LA HORA, Ricardo Freire, technical general superintendent of the Superintendency of Economic Competition, acknowledged that “in Ecuador there is overregulation, a large amount of regulation that is not adequately justified. That is the responsibility of the State (politicians).”
The labor issue is a clear example of regulatory chaos
In the labor issue, the Work codeaccording to Corral, has moved to a kind of second or third plane of importance because there are 13 organic laws that affect that Code, either by reforming it or by proposing implicit or hidden reforms.
These hidden reforms operate because organic laws, from the point of view of the normative hierarchy, are above the code.
Thus, in terms of employment, an employer must not only review the Labor Code, but also carry out a very complex investigation to establish which rule, which Organic Code or which law contains the changes that may affect him when hiring a worker.
Corral considered that this began with the famous constitutional mandates (2008); but it was explicitly consolidated with the expedition of the Organic Code of Production in 2010.
This regulation initiated successive reforms to the Labor Code without control and even without support.
The law, in many aspects, does not work to make life easier for citizens, but to complicate it.
“We find labor issues in the strangest laws. There is a regulation on wages, there are regulations on sanctions in the strangest laws. So I think we should make a logical, systematic reflection and say what we do with this. At least let us put such a large number of laws in order,” said Corral.
To top off the chaotic scenario, Corral explained that in Ecuador the legal system works upside down.
“Here prevails the regulationhe ministerial agreement and the secondary standard above the main rule. At the time of a dispute, the judge will have to apply that hidden rule that the businessman did not consider and that generates distrust,” Corral said. (JS)
Overregulation and laws with political overtones
María Paz Jervis, president of the Chamber of Industries and Production (CIP) and executive president of Ecuadorian Business Committee (CEE), during the debate of the workplace harassment lawcriticized overregulation and the creation of laws with political overtones and even prejudices such as that “the employer only goes out to exploit.”
“As long as that spirit underlies regulation and public policy, it sets us back as a society,” Jervis concluded.
By: LA HORA Newspaper