Tensions within the governing Alianza Pais party have reached a new high as ex-president Rafael Correa returns to the country from Belgium, where he lives now,  vowing to fight “traitors,” namely the current president — Correa’s former vice-president Lenin Moreno.
Correa, with the support of the Alianza Pais leadership, accuses Moreno of betraying the socialist gains of the 10-year citizens’ revolution by cosying up to big business and the right-wing media that Correa spent so long fighting.
This follows months of fiery rhetoric between them as Moreno called Correa’s supporters “sheep” — the very sheep that campaigned for him this year — and Correa denounced Moreno as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” who “is ruling with the right.”  
An Alianza Pais conference tomorrow in the coastal province of Esmeraldas is expected to ratify the leadership’s decision to expel Moreno as party leader amid anger over a number of his policies that are returning Ecuador to the neoliberal era.
These include holding secret meetings with disgraced Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, withdrawing Ecuador’s solidarity with Venezuela and reversing Correa’s tax rises and regulations on large landowners, which the Ecuadorean Communist Party has denounced as “losing control of financial speculation.”
Moreno is also seen to be purging state institutions of Correa supporters to the left of his own.  
Ecuador was a success story of “Socialism of the 21st century” in Latin America. After years of economic crisis, Correa was swept to power by the country’s social movements.
He cancelled the country’s foreign debt and put Ecuador on a path of prosperity as extreme poverty was reduced by nearly 50 per cent. Public services in education and healthcare, previously ranked by the Inter American Development Bank as among the worst in the region, was recognised as the most effective and efficient.
Correa proved himself ready to fight imperialism as he survived a right-wing coup attempt in 2010, expelled US military bases and allied himself with Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba as part of the Latin American left.  
While Moreno may have wider support from conservatives and the middle class now, he has clearly lost the support of Alianza Pais that overwhelmingly endorses the progressive and socialist changes of the Correa period.