0
0
Car horns resounded in Quito in jubilation on Sunday as Daniel Noboa, the 35-year-old scion of a banana empire, emerged as Ecuador’s youngest-ever president-elect. He pledged to “restore peace” to a nation torn apart by a brutal drug gang war.
After the electoral authority declared him the victor and his socialist opponent, Luisa Gonzalez, conceded defeat, Noboa committed to commencing the work of rebuilding a nation that has been deeply scarred by violence, corruption, and animosity.
Once a tranquil sanctuary between the major cocaine-exporting countries of Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has witnessed a surge in violence in recent years as rival gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels contend for control. This bloodshed has resulted in the massacre of at least 460 inmates in prisons since February 2021, with many being beheaded or burned alive in mass riots.
The violence has spilled into the streets, with gangs displaying headless corpses from city bridges and detonating car bombs outside police stations as a show of strength. In August, the violence claimed the life of anti-corruption and anti-cartel presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who was gunned down in a barrage of submachine-gun fire after a campaign speech. He had been polling in second place.
A state of emergency was declared following Villavicencio’s assassination, and both Noboa and Gonzalez campaigned and voted in bulletproof vests with heavy security details.
On Sunday, in his hometown of Olon in the southwest, Noboa told his supporters that his objective was to “restore peace, bring back education for the youth, and create jobs.”
Ecuadorians cast their votes for 10 hours on Sunday without any reports of violence, monitored by around 100,000 police and soldiers.
Indigenous voter Ramiro Duchitanga in Cuenca in Ecuador’s south expressed, “May we elect the best president because [he or she] will govern a country that is destroyed, to address all these problems such as insecurity.”
Freddy Escobar, a popular 49-year-old singer in Quito, added, “It is a critical election,” citing crime as his main concern. “I am voting in fear, not knowing what will happen.”
According to opinion polls, the main concerns of Ecuadorians are crime and violence in a country where the murder rate quadrupled in the four years leading up to 2022.
Noboa, who secured approximately 52 percent of the vote according to a near-complete count, was elected to serve only 16 months in office, completing the term of incumbent Guillermo Lasso, who called a snap vote to evade potential impeachment for alleged embezzlement.
Under the law, Noboa can run for the 2025-29 presidential term and the one after that.
Both runoff candidates were relatively unknown in politics. Noboa is the son of one of Ecuador’s wealthiest individuals, who himself has had five failed presidential bids. The president-elect, with only two years of political experience as a lawmaker, labels himself “center-left” but embraces neoliberal economic principles. He ran on the ticket of the newly formed National Democratic Action alliance, which includes parties from the center and left of the political spectrum.
Ecuador has a poverty rate of 27 percent, with a quarter of the population either unemployed or engaged in informal employment, making unemployment a significant concern according to opinion polls.
Noboa reiterated on Sunday his intent to “propel progress in a country that possesses all the elements to be a global exemplar.”
Gonzalez was the chosen candidate of socialist ex-president Rafael Correa, who governed from 2007 to 2017 and lives in exile in Belgium to avoid serving an eight-year prison term for graft—an additional major concern in the country.
Out of 137 lawmakers in parliament, Noboa has the support of only 13, meaning he won’t have an absolute majority to back his legislative projects. With just 16 months in office, he will face a challenging task in pushing through any reforms, say analysts.
Voting is mandatory for the 13.4 million eligible voters in a country with a population of around 18 million, and the election authority reported a turnout exceeding 82 percent.
After social media images showed an individual apparently filling out multiple ballots in favor of Noboa, the head of the National Electoral Commission, Diana Atamaint, pledged an “immediate” investigation.
