Ecuador elects president in close runoff under drug violence

Ecuador began voting this Sunday to elect its first female president or the youngest president in history in a runoff that is expected to be close and tense after the murder of a candidate in the midst of the drug onslaught.

The day started calmly and will last until 5:00 pm to choose under mandatory voting between two candidates: Luisa Gonzalezbishop of former socialist president Rafael Correa (2007-2017), and Daniel Noboa, son of one of the richest men in the country.

The candidates lowered the curtain on an electoral campaign marked by bulletproof vests, guards with rifles and a unanimous cry: stop the violence.

“It is a critical election (…) What is most worrying is the issue of insecurity and crime,” Freddy Escobar (49 years old), a popular singer in Quito, told AFP.

In recent years, Ecuador has become a center of operations for drug cartels with international tentacles. who impose a regime of terror and leave thousands dead, some dismembered or hanging from bridges.

Supported by right-wing forces and self-proclaimed center-left, Noboa could become the youngest president in the country’s history at 35 years old. On her side, the leftist González, 45, aspires to be the first woman elected to the presidency.

Voters “come to vote in a climate of fear (…) but also of skepticism regarding their economic condition” when poverty is around 27% in a dollarized country, Santiago Cahuasquí, a political scientist at SEK University, explained to AFP. . The sum of unemployment and informal work is 26%.

Some 13.4 of the 16.9 million Ecuadorians are called to the polls in elections in which several surveys predict a head-to-head race.

Some 100,000 military and police are deployed throughout the country to guarantee the security of the elections.

fleeting presidency

The winner this Sunday will govern Ecuador for almost 17 months until the end of the presidential term of the right-wing Guillermo Lasso, who dissolved Congress and called early elections to avoid dismissal in a political trial for corruption.

Experts consider that the new mandate will be a kind of pre-campaign for the four-year election in 2025, which will set the style of the short period.

Political violence was added to the institutional crisis. Eight leaders were murdered, including a mayor, two municipal councilors, a candidate for deputy and a presidential candidate.

Fernando Villavicencio, one of the favorite candidates for the first round on August 20, was shot as he left a rally in Quito a few days before the elections. Later, seven of the prisoners involved in his crime were murdered in different prisons.

González and Noboa committed to fighting crime and drug gangs. Between 2018 and 2022 the homicide rate quadrupled and rose to 26 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. This year, experts estimate that it will increase to 40.

Candidates and journalists move around protected by vests, helmets and armored cars.

“They might kill me,” Noboa confessed in an interview with AFP after his run-off.

Gangs linked to Mexican and Colombian cartels clash over the drug business and use prisons as logistics offices, where bloody massacres have occurred. Since 2021, more than 460 inmates have died in these clashes.

“We are going to lift up this Ecuador (…) that cries out for peace, for security, for employment, for health,” González said on Thursday.

In a foreign body

Son of a banana magnate, Noboa aspires to fulfill his father’s frustrated dream of being president. Álvaro Noboa ran for election five times without success and in 2006 lost against Correa, who from the shadows is now a rival of his heir.

Reserved and with few smiles, the young candidate tiptoed into the second round being almost unknown in politics.

Very active on social networks, Noboa proposes to boost the economy and employment, with credit facilities and tax incentives for small and medium-sized businesses.

His most famous proposal was to create prison ships to isolate prisoners from “the non-violent” and their criminal networks.

For his part, González symbolizes the return in another body of Correa, in exile in Belgium and sentenced to eight years in prison for corruption. She assures that he will maintain his independence.

Tattooed, athlete, Christian and defender of animals, González proposes a more supportive State after the right-wing governments that followed her mentor.

In the first round, Noboa obtained 23% of the votes against González’s 34%.

Without an absolute majority in Congress, any of the candidates will face difficulties in making their reforms a reality.