The fight between two RC legislators strained the legislative committee.

Assembly member Ana María Raffo filed a defamation lawsuit against her colleague Assembly member Ana Belén Yela, both belonging to the Revolución Ciudadana (RC) bloc. Despite this, they were appointed to the same Commission on Education, Culture, Science, Technology, Innovation, and Ancestral Knowledge.

Raffo stated that she was falsely accused by Yela in audios from the Liga2 case, where she was allegedly charged with improper payments to her legislative advisor, known as diezmos. In her message, she expressed that "her honor and name are not to be played with", and she asked that the other legislator respond to justice for the defamation.

The audios, released by the State Attorney General's Office on April 10, are part of file 06-2025-F1. In them, offensive expressions attributed to Yela are heard, such as that Raffo "has Luisa's best friend working in the Assembly" and that "she takes two thousand dollars from her advisor's salary."

The case was presented in the Criminal Judicial Unit of Quito, and it is being processed by Judge Giovanny Freire Coloma. In her complaint, Raffo emphasized that Yela's statements are not only unfounded but constitute a direct accusation of the crime of extortion, as defined in article 282 of the COIP.

The tension between Yela and Raffo became public during the formation of the permanent legislative commissions. The Education Commission was out of the control of the ruling party, being chaired by Assembly member Cecilia Baltazar (Pachakutik), which increased the focus on the internal frictions of the correísta bloc.

The inclusion of both legislators in the same commission, despite the ongoing judicial process, exposes the internal fractures and lack of political cohesion within the RC. Meanwhile, the ruling party consolidates its majority in other commissions, correísmo deals with personal disputes that weaken its operational capacity.

Additionally, it has been revealed that Yela is the daughter of former minister of the correato María de los Ángeles Duarte, which adds a symbolic burden to the conflict, given the recent history of the movement and its most controversial figures. In this context, the credibility of the correísta caucus is once again called into question.

This internal conflict between legislators of the Revolución Ciudadana not only destabilizes legislative work in a key commission but also evidences the tensions and mistrusts that weaken the structure of the correísta left in the new parliamentary period.