Quito, Ecuador – Night had already fallen and all the shops on the Avenue of the Shyris, a main thoroughfare in the heart of Quito, Ecuador, were closed.
But last Sunday, part of the street was still packed as supporters of Daniel Noboa gathered in the stands outside La Carolina Park to celebrate his victory over leftist Luisa Gonzalez in the 2023 presidential race.
“This is a triumph for the youngest,” Maria Paz, 25, told Al Jazeera as she joined revelers on the avenue.
At 35, Noboa is expected to become Ecuador’s youngest elected president, and during his campaign he appealed to the country’s relatively young electorate. Almost a quarter of all eligible voters are between 18 and 29 years old.
But Noboa faces an uphill battle as he prepares to take over the Palacio de Carondelet, Ecuador’s presidential palace.
Facing a shortened 18-month term, Noboa has little time – and little political backing – to address some of Ecuador’s most pressing problems.
And there is a lot at stake. Ecuador’s economy is still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and crime has skyrocketed, frightening the population.
But voters like Paz are optimistic. When she heard the election night results, she rushed to the avenue with a life-size cardboard cutout of the president-elect in tow. “Now I expect jobs to be created and organized crime to leave my country,” she said.
Maria Paz (left) celebrates with her life-size cardboard cutout of candidate Daniel Noboa on October 15 in Quito, Ecuador [Michele Bertelli/Al Jazeera]
So many problems, so little time
The circumstances of Noboa’s election are historical. Facing possible impeachment, incumbent President Guillermo Lasso in May invoked a never-before-used constitutional mechanism known as “muerte cruzada,” or “death in both directions.”
This allowed him to dissolve the National Assembly – at the cost of ending his own presidency. Lasso had 90 days to call a new election.
The “mutual death” also limited the term of Lasso’s successor. Typically, a full presidential term lasts four years. But under the “mutual death” rule, Lasso’s successor can only serve the remainder of his term: 18 months.
That means Ecuadorians will go to the polls again in May 2025, barely a year and a half after Noboa was sworn in.
The shortness of this mandate puts pressure on Noboa to act – and quickly.
President-elect Daniel Noboa has his presidential sash measured in Quito, Ecuador [Carondelet Palace/Reuters handout]“He has to deal with the uncertainty. To a certain extent, it should promote public health, support the poorest sectors and provide opportunities for higher education,” Santiago Basabe, the director of the Ecuadorian Political Science Association, told Al Jazeera.
“Other than that, I don’t think he can do much more in that time.”
Governing with a fragmented assembly
According to Basabe, Noboa is the first head of state since 1979 to come to power without the support of a formal political party.
The heir to one of Ecuador’s richest families, which made its fortune from banana exports, Noboa is a relative newcomer to national politics. He was first elected to the National Assembly in 2021 and was in the middle of his first term when the legislature was dissolved.
As a freshman member, Noboa had not yet risen into the ranks of an existing political party and had not yet formed a strong political movement.
Therefore, he relied on the support of two existing parties to support his presidential bid: a group called People, Equality and Democracy (PID) and the Revolutionary and Democratic Ethical Green Movement (MOVER).
Together with Noboa’s own movement, they formed a coalition called the National Democratic Alliance (ADN). Nevertheless, each party retains its independence. Neither PID nor MOVER are officially managed by Noboa.
In addition, Noboa also has to deal with a fragmented National Assembly. Since new parliamentary elections took place in August, no single political group has an overall majority.
Of the 137 seats in the assembly, Noboa’s ADN coalition secured about 14 seats, compared to about 52 for the Citizen Revolution Movement, the party of Gonzalez, his presidential rival.
Neither total is enough to lead the caucus without additional votes from outside parties.
“Pragmatism must be his north star,” Basabe said. He believes that Noboa should avoid contact with the National Assembly as much as possible and instead focus on what he can achieve through executive actions.
“The purchase of new equipment for the security forces does not require approval from the National Assembly. He just needs to allocate some budget for it and have the political will to push it forward,” Basabe explained.
As a presidential candidate, Daniel Noboa sought to appeal to both sides of the political divide while defying party classification [Cesar Munoz/AP Photo]
Fears of a “Lasso 2.0”
Noboa is also suspected of being part of a right-wing political trend that began with Lasso.
The outgoing president was the country’s first elected conservative leader in nearly two decades. Like Noboa, Lasso was a businessman before his career in politics and ran a well-known bank.
In the run-up to Sunday’s runoff, Gonzalez and the Citizens Revolutionary Movement sought to link the two men by portraying Noboa as a continuation of the rightward shift that Lasso had started.
Critics pointed to his vice president Verónica Abad as evidence of this political leaning. Abad, a right-wing economic coach, has spoken about her desire to privatize Ecuador’s education and health services, and she has been vocal in her criticism of abortion and feminism.
But Noboa has described his views as center-left, and analysts stress that it is still too early to understand how he might govern given his limited political history.
Supporters of Daniel Noboa gather on the street in Quito after his election victory [Michele Bertelli/Al Jazeera]“He is a 35-year-old boy with no real political experience who has a huge fortune. Nobody has any idea what his government will look like,” Basabe said.
Political analyst Arianna Tanca Macchiavello told Al Jazeera she believes fiscal and political constraints will shape the Noboa government more than any ideology.
She explained that his political campaign so far has been based on optics and Noboa has presented himself as neither right nor left.
“Noboa may have to move from political marketing to governing,” Tanca said.
Both Basabe and Tanca stated that Noboa’s choice of cabinet members would be an opportunity for the president-elect to establish his government differently from Lasso’s. But Basabe warned that if Noboa only hired wealthy advisers and establishment figures, he would risk upsetting the public.
“His cabinet should smell of diversity and taste of renovation,” Basabe said.
Daniel Noboa (left) shakes hands with outgoing President Guillermo Lasso during a transition meeting on October 17 [Dolores Ochoa/AP Photo]
Given Ecuador’s security dilemma
In the days since the election, Noboa has already taken steps to begin organizing his administration and setting priorities.
Many of his first steps have to do with Ecuador’s unstable security situation. In Ecuador, once a relatively peaceful country, the murder rate has skyrocketed in recent years.
In the first six months of 2023, Ecuadorian police documented 4,374 homicides, putting the country on track to be the third-largest country in Latin America.
Part of the problem is due to the increasing presence of organized crime seeking to exploit drug trafficking routes through Ecuador. The country lies between the main cocaine producing regions of Colombia and Peru and borders the Pacific Ocean.
The government is struggling to contain the resulting violence. On Tuesday, Noboa met with Lasso and asked him to convene a security council as soon as possible.
During the last presidential debate, Noboa also said that he would hold a nationwide referendum on the role of the Ecuadorian Armed Forces during his first 100 days in office.
Daniel Noboa voted in the Oct. 15 runoff election wearing a bulletproof vest as violence mounted in Ecuador [File: Martin Mejia/AP Photo]According to Luis Córdova-Alarcón, an expert on conflict and violence at the Central University of Ecuador, Lasso took a military approach to fighting organized crime with support from the United States and Israel.
“But there was no accompanying political strategy,” Córdova told Al Jazeera.
Córdova believes this militarized “war on drugs” approach only leads to more violence. Instead, he believes Noboa should focus on investigating money laundering, rooting out official corruption and reforming the police.
But that could be a tall order for 18 months in office, Córdova said. Noboa will have his hands full during this time.
“Cutting criminal violence, reducing corruption and achieving economic growth are priorities for Latin America. But you can only achieve one or two of them, not all at once,” Córdova said.
As she cast her vote last Sunday, political scientist Pamela Ledesma told Al Jazeera that 18 months as president may not be enough time to make significant changes – but there is enough time to lose public favor.
“I believe that victory will become a punishment for the winner,” she said.