Quito (Ecuador), Apr 14: Ecuadorian voters weary of crime on Sunday reelected President Daniel Noboa, a conservative young millionaire with a divisive no-holds-barred crimefighting record, but his opponent vowed to seek a recount over what she described as “grotesque” electoral fraud.
Figures released by Ecuador’s National Electoral Council show Noboa receiving 55.8 per cent of the vote with more than 90 per cent of ballots counted, while leftist lawyer Luisa González earned 44 per cent.
Ecuador’s top electoral authority, Diana Atamaint, said those results showed an “irreversible trend” in favor of Noboa.
The win gives Noboa four years to fulfil the promises he first made in 2023, when he stunned voters by winning a snap election and a 16-month presidency despite his limited political experience.
González’s defeat marks the third consecutive time that the party of Rafael Correa, the country’s most influential president this century, failed to return to the presidency.
Noboa, heir to a fortune built on the banana trade, is expected to continue applying some of his no-holds-barred crimefighting strategies that part of the electorate finds appealing but which have tested the limits of laws and norms of governing.
González on Sunday told supporters her campaign “does not recognize the results presented by the “(National Electoral Council),” arguing among other issues that pre-election polls showed her ahead of Noboa.
The candidates advanced to Sunday’s contest after getting the most votes in February’s first-round election. Noboa led González by about 17,000 votes.
No. 1 concern among voters is violence
Voters are primarily worried about the violence that transformed the country, starting in 2021 — a spike in crime tied to the trafficking of cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia and Peru.
Both candidates have promised tough-on-crime policies, better equipment for law enforcement and international help to fight drug cartels and local criminal groups.
“My vote is clear,” said Irene Valdez, a retiree who voted for Noboa. “I want to continue living in freedom.”
College student Martín Constante had a different view.
“I think Luisa is going to change things, because Noboa has been very authoritarian,” Constante, 19, said near a voting center in Quito, the capital. “Our country needs a lot of changes.”
More than 13 million people were eligible to vote, which is mandatory for adults up to the age of 65. It is optional for people aged 16 and 17 and over 65. Failure to vote results in a USD46 fine.
Several arrests over ballot anomalies
Atamaint said several people, including voters and poll workers, had been arrested over ballot anomalies. She said some cases involved double voting and others stemmed from reports of counterfeit, pre-marked ballots.
Atamaint added that 17 people were caught taking photos of their ballots, which the National Electoral Council banned for this election citing reports of voter coercion by criminal groups. The violation comes with a maximum fine of $32,000.
Many Ecuadorians used their vote to express rejection of a candidate and not necessarily to endorse the candidate they voted for.
“Ecuador is polarized, which is a sign of rejection of the past, but also of the recent policies of the Noboa administration,” political analyst Oswaldo Landázuri said, adding that the expected tight result “could become a major problem for the country” if one candidate does not recognize the other as the winner.
In 2023, Noboa and González were largely unknown to most voters as they sought the presidency for the first time. They were first-term lawmakers in May 2023, when then-President Guillermo Lasso dissolved the National Assembly, shortening his own mandate as a result and triggering that year’s snap election.
Noboa heir to a fortune built on bananas
Noboa’s first foray into politics was his stint as a lawmaker. An heir to a fortune built on the banana trade, Noboa opened an event organizing company when he was 18 and then joined his father’s Noboa Corp., where he held management positions in the shipping, logistics and commercial areas.
González, 47, held various government jobs during the presidency of Rafael Correa, who led Ecuador from 2007 through 2017 with free-spending socially conservative policies and grew increasingly authoritarian in his last years as president.
Noboa, 37, declared Ecuador to be in a state of “internal armed conflict” in January 2024, allowing him to deploy thousands of soldiers to the streets to combat gangs and to charge people with terrorism counts for alleged ties to organized crime groups.
Under his watch, the homicide rate dropped from 46.18 per 100,000 people in 2023, to 38.76 per 100,000 people in 2024. But despite the decrease, the rate remained far higher than the 6.85 homicides per 100,000 people seen in 2019.
Some of Noboa’s heavy-handed crime-fighting tactics have come under scrutiny for testing the limits of laws and norms of governing. He has also been criticized for allegations of electoral irregularities he made after February’s vote. (AP)
