In the first round of Ecuador’s presidential and legislative elections, which have been marred by political assassinations as the Andean nation battles a wave of violence that has pushed homicide rates to record highs, Luisa González of the Movimiento Revolución Ciudadana party took a lead on Sunday.
According to the National Electoral Council of Ecuador (CNE), Gonzalez will compete against the unexpected second-place finisher Daniel Noboa in a run-off election in October because neither candidate received more than 50% of the vote.
The CNE’s Diana Atamaint declared on Sunday that the preliminary results “already show a trend that guarantees that Ecuadorians will go to a run-off on October 15.”
González is seen as a protégé of former socialist president Rafael Correa, who continues to hold significant power in the nation and supported her campaign while living in exile in Belgium. The former president, who has consistently rejected the charge of severe bribery, was given an eight-year prison sentence in absentia in 2020.
González aims to address the security situation by addressing the underlying causes of violence, such as poverty and inequality, and has pledged to increase public investment and social programmes. González, a former minister of tourism and labour in the Correa administration, has also advocated for the court to be strengthened to aid in prosecutions, according to commentators.
Lvaro Noboa, a banana businessman who has himself stood for president at least five times, is the father of Daniel Noboa. Prior to the legislature being dissolved and early elections announced by outgoing President Guillermo Lasso, the 35-year-old was a politician.
The centrist, who is a member of the Accion Democratica Nacional party, has promised to increase the number of jobs available to young people, attract more foreign investment, and propose many anti-corruption measures, including harsher penalties for tax evasion.
This year’s presidential election has focused heavily on crime, which was highlighted by the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, an outspoken critic of corruption in the media.
His death has drawn attention to a recent uptick in violence, spurred by a cocaine boom, in which local gangs and multinational criminal organisations have overtaken prisons, engaged in high-level extortion, and murdered anyone who stands in their way.
A left-leaning local party official named Pedro Briones was shot and killed in the province of Esmeraldas a few days after Villavicencio’s death.
On Thursday, while Noboa was travelling through the province of Guayas, gunfire broke up his caravan. However, according to the authorities, Noboa was not the intended target of the crime.
On election day, candidates wore bulletproof vests as security personnel stood guard outside voting places amid threats of violence.
Christian Zurita, Villavicencio’s successor, voted in the nation’s capital Quito while being heavily guarded by the police and military of Ecuador.
However, on Sunday, authorities detected cyberattacks on the nation’s telematic voting network from a number of nations, including Bangladesh, China, Russia, and the Ukraine. The nation’s National Electoral Council stated that the incident impeded voting access but underlined that the votes cast were valid.
Many Ecuadorians have been forced to flee the nation due to the escalating violence and the lack of promising economic possibilities.
However, the winner of the run-off election in October won’t have much time to come up with a solution. They will only be in government until 2025, which is the conclusion of Lasso’s six-year tenure. According to experts, this is not enough time for even the most seasoned politician to make significant changes to the country.