Quito – The correísta Luisa González and Daniel Noboa were heading to the closing of this edition to clarify for the presidential ballot in October in Ecuador, according to official data released by the National Electoral Council (CNE) with almost 40% of the votes counted.
Millions of Ecuadorians voted yesterday in presidential and legislative elections after a campaign marred by bloodshed, amid voters’ hopes that the winner would lift the country out of the spiral of violence and economic problems in which it finds itself.
González, a protégé of former President Rafael Correa, led the vote with 33.35% of the votes, followed by former legislator Noboa with 24.33%. Christian Zurita, who took the place of the assassinated Fernando Villavicencio, appeared third with 16.09% of the preferences.
Jan Topic, who says he was a member of the French Foreign Legion, appeared fourth with him with 14.59% of the vote.
Given that no candidate would obtain half plus one of the votes or 40% with a ten point advantage over the second, the runoff would take place on October 15.
Whoever is elected will complete the term of the outgoing Guillermo Lasso, who invoked the constitutional clause known as “cross death”, which supposes the dissolution of the executive and legislative powers, to avoid a impeachment trial.
A new National Assembly (unicameral parliament) was also elected.
Hope
González’s supporters, gathered in southern Quito where the candidate was expected to speak, said they wanted a return to Correa’s social programs and better job opportunities.
“I feel as a woman that she is going to fight for the town,” said Fany Tarqui, 52, who brought her two daughters and her dog to the demonstration. “We want tranquility and sources of work”
González and Noboa have joined their competitors in pledging to fight the sharp rise in crime, which the conservative Lasso government attributes to drug gangs (see p. 15), and improve the struggling dollarized economy, whose problems have led to increased unemployment and migration.
González, of leftist ideology, is a legislator and was the only woman in the running.
A staunch supporter of Correa and a strong critic of Lasso, he promised in his campaign to restore the million-dollar social programs that his mentor launched between 2007 and 2017, as well as to use some 2.5 billion dollars from international reserves to reactivate the country’s flagging economy. weighed down by dollarization.
Meanwhile, Noboa, the surprise of the day, has been a member of the assembly since 2021. Candidate for Acción Democrática Nacional (ADN) is the son of banana magnate Álvaro Noboa, considered one of the richest men in Ecuador.
His academic degrees are from US universities: he is a business administrator from New York University, a master’s degree in the area from the Kellogg School of Management, a master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard University and a master’s degree in Political Communication and Strategic Governance from George Washington University.
The axis of his campaign has been job creation. “I am a man of projects, who does not give up and does not give up. Together we can make Ecuador the project we want, ”he remarks in his plan.
Debate
Security has been at the center of the race since the murder of anti-corruption journalist and former lawmaker Fernando Villavicencio, who was gunned down as he was leaving a campaign rally in Quito earlier this month.
Other candidates have reported attacks and threats against them, although in several cases the police have said that the violence was not directed at the applicants. Voters in Quito and Guayaquil said that security was their main demand for the new president.
Source: Ambito
