Ecuador will elect its first female president or the youngest president in history this Sunday in a runoff election that is expected to be close and tense following the assassination of a candidate amid the drug offensive.
Luisa González – bishop of former socialist President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) – and Daniel Noboa – son of one of the country’s richest men – brought down the curtain on a campaign marked by bulletproof vests, guards with rifles and a unanimous clamor : stop violence.
In recent years, Ecuador has become an operations center for drug cartels with international tentacles that are establishing a regime of terror and leaving thousands dead, some dismembered or hanging from bridges.
Voters “vote in a climate of fear (…) but also of skepticism about their economic situation,” Santiago Cahuasquí, a political scientist at SEK University, told AFP, when poverty in a dollar country is around 27 % lies.
Supported by right-wing and self-proclaimed center-left forces, Noboa, at 35, could become the youngest president in the country’s history. For her part, the leftist González (45) is striving to be the first woman elected to the presidency.
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“Let the candidates come true what they say so that Ecuador goes forward and not backwards (…) People are so desperate because of crime, insecurity and unemployment,” pensioner Jaime Morales, 68, told AFP. The sum of unemployment and informal work is 26%.
About 13.4 of Ecuador’s 16.9 million people must cast their mandatory vote between 7:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. local time (12:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. GMT) to win a presidential formula in elections where several polls are predicting a margin of victory to choose – head-to-head race.
Around 100,000 military and police personnel are deployed across the country to ensure election security.
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The winner this Sunday will rule Ecuador for nearly 17 months, until the end of the term of right-wing President Guillermo Lasso, who dissolved Congress and called early elections to avoid being fired in a political corruption trial.
Experts believe that the new mandate will be a kind of pre-campaign for the quadrennial election in 2025, which will determine the style of the short period.
Political violence added to the institutional crisis. Eight leaders were assassinated, including a mayor, two local councilors, a candidate for MP and a presidential candidate.
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Fernando Villavicencio, one of the favorite candidates for the first round of voting on August 20, was shot dead 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 were committed to fighting crime and drug gangs. Between 2018 and 2022, the murder rate quadrupled, rising to 26 murders per 100,000 residents. Experts expect it to rise to 40 this year.
Candidates and journalists move around protected by vests, helmets and armored cars.
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“They could kill me,” Noboa admitted in an interview with AFP after his runoff.
Gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels clash over the drug trade and use prisons as logistics offices, where bloody massacres have occurred. Since 2021, more than 460 inmates have died in these clashes.
“We will raise this Ecuador (…) that cries out for peace, security, employment and health,” González said on Thursday.
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Noboa, the son of a banana tycoon, strives to fulfill his father’s dashed dream of becoming president. Álvaro Noboa ran unsuccessfully for the election five times and lost in 2006 to Correa, who is now a rival to his heir from the shadows.
Reserved and with few smiles, the young candidate tiptoed into the second round, almost unknown in politics.
Noboa is very active on social networks and proposes to stimulate the economy and employment through credit facilities and tax incentives for small and medium-sized businesses.
His most famous proposal was the creation of prison ships to isolate prisoners from “the non-violent” and their criminal networks.
For his part, González symbolizes the return to another body of Correa, who is in exile and sentenced to eight years in prison for corruption. Although he says he will maintain his independence, the popular former president controls the reins of power from Belgium.
Tattooed athlete, Christian and animal rights activist González proposes a more supportive state after the right-wing governments that followed her mentor.
In the first round, Noboa received 23% of the vote compared to González’s 34%.
Without an absolute majority in Congress, each candidate will have difficulty implementing their reforms.
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