RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno repealed this Friday his controversial Executive Decree 1313, which reformed the regulations for granting pardons to persons deprived of liberty and opened this possibility to all types of people who committed serious crimes.
“To avoid misrepresentations and misunderstandings, regarding the parameters on pardons, President Moreno has ordered the repeal of Executive Decree 1313, dated May 10, 2021,” the Secretariat of Communication specified in its social networks.
This decree establishes that the pardon is a discretionary power of the president. He can grant commutation, pardon, or reduction of sentence compliance to prisoners with an enforceable conviction and who maintain good behavior after the crime.
However, the pardon cannot be applied in public administration crimes such as embezzlement or bribery.
The reform of May 10 generated great controversy because it opened the pardon to all kinds of unthinkable cases by proposing chronic diseases as an argument for its application.
With this reform, those persons with long-term and slowly progressive illnesses could request a presidential pardon, regardless of their crime, local media denounced.
The inclusion of the word “chronic” in one of the articles of a 2015 law opened the possibility of pardon, for example, to those deprived of liberty for crimes of genocide, torture, forced disappearance of persons, kidnapping, and homicides for political reasons or reasons of conscience, in case of having a catastrophic or terminal illness, which generated disagreement in many sectors.
Moreno, who will leave the Presidency on May 24, issued a new Decree, 1341, to repeal the changes applied a few days ago.