The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, again decreed a new state of emergency at the national level for 60 days, this time because of the serious energy crisis that the country is going through, with blackouts of up to eight hours during to not being able to meet the national demand for electricity.

Through a decree, Noboa ordered “the mobilization and intervention of the National Police and the Armed Forces throughout the national territory, duly coordinated, to guarantee the security of critical energy infrastructure facilities to prevent sabotage, terrorist attacks or other threats that may affect their operation.”

Since last Sunday Ecuador has suffered daily blackouts in different areas of up to eight hours of duration, since the Mazar reservoir, the second largest in the country, has been left without the sufficient water level, which allows the operation of a complex of three hydroelectric plants with a power of 1,757 megawatts, equivalent to about a third of national demand.

Added to this is the cut in the supply of electricity from Colombia, which also faces a situation of great drought that does not allow it to generate surplus electricity to export to Ecuador.

This new state of emergency occurs on the eve of the referendum called by Noboa for this Sunday where it seeks to carry out with popular support a series of reforms in the field of security, justice, investments and employment.

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It also arrives less than three weeks after the previous state of emergency ended, issued at the beginning of January to address the swell of violence of organized crime gangs, after a series of attacks and violent actions that included the taking of the TC Television channel by a group of armed men during a live broadcast.

The previous state of emergency was accompanied by the declaration of ‘internal armed conflict’, the same that remains until now and that serves the Ecuadorian Government to consider twenty-two criminal gangs as terrorist groups and non-state belligerent actors that can be neutralized by the Armed Forces.

Thus, in the week of the referendum, the blackouts returned to Ecuador, a situation that Ecuadorians had already experienced at the end of last year due to another similar situation of drought in the main hydroelectric plants and a fall in Colombia’s supply.

On that occasion the power cuts were up to four hours, half that at the current time that Noboa attributed to an alleged sabotage, to the point that his administration filed a complaint against twenty-two people for allegedly hiding information and not giving the voice of alert in advance.

Among the people who are part of the presidential accusation is the former Minister of Energy and Mines Andrea Arrobo, to whom Noboa asked for her resignation in a public event on Tuesday, after last Friday she had ruled out the return of blackouts to Ecuador in the short term.

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Even the Secretary of Communication of the Presidency, Roberto Izurieta, went so far as to affirm on Thursday that they have suspicions that the Mazar reservoir was deliberately emptied, something that was denied by the Corporación Eléctrica del Ecuador (Celec), which operates the reservoir.

According to the data of this company, the level of the reservoir, located in the southern Andean province of Azuay, whose capital is Cuenca, has been gradually decreasing since the beginning of this year, and apparently it has not rained enough in that time for it to be replenished.

The prolonged power cuts forced the Government to decree for this Thursday and Friday the suspension of the working day and school classes, although many private businesses continued to operate normally, since in Ecuador only three out of ten people of working age have a formal job.