In a difficult economic, social, political and insecurity moment, Ecuador goes to the polls this Sunday to choose who will govern the country for just 18 months. Luisa González, of the Citizen Revolution (RC) movement led by former president Rafael Correa, and Daniel Noboa Azín, founder of the National Democratic Action movement (ADN) and son of the business magnate Álvaro Noboa, are competing in the second electoral round trusting that their offers have attracted an apathetic, indecisive and distrustful electorate.
Around 13.4 million Ecuadorians are called to vote in the presidential elections anticipated after, last May, President Guillermo Lasso, to avoid his dismissal in a political trial, decreed cross death, a constitutional measure with which he dissolved the Assembly and requested the calling of general elections.
The new governors and assembly members must complete the four-year period of the authorities who were elected in May 2021 and they will be laid off next December with the change of command.
(Also read: Ecuador: Correismo candidate for president denounces plan to attack her)
The electoral scenario is the same that Ecuador has repeated in the last three elections. This presents the dilemma of choosing between two competing political projects: the populist socialism represented in González, a 45-year-old lawyer with studies in senior management and international economics and development, and identified by her loyalty and ideological alignment with Correa; and the right-wing proposal put forward by Noboa, a 35-year-old young businessman, with studies in business administration and public administration who kicked the electoral board in the first round and who with his offers to transform Ecuador quickly positioned himself with high possibilities of becoming the youngest president in the country.
“Today an economic and political model is at stake for Ecuador, while Noboa is much more inclined towards a State that does not intervene much in the economy and is more friendly to private enterprise, González represents the vision of Bolivianism that advocates a larger and more efficient State. intervener and a more limited and regulated private company,” journalist and political analyst Martín Pallares describes to EL TIEMPO.
(You can read: Correismo will be the first force in the Ecuadorian Congress after the elections)
A victory for González would mean a process of institutional reforms that would allow the return of Correa
“Once again, in this election the return of Rafael Correa’s authoritarian and undemocratic model is at stake. A victory for Luisa González would mean a process of institutional reforms and changes in certain justice agencies that would allow the return of Correa to run in the 2025 elections,” adds the analyst.
Nothing is clear so far. Opinion studies divide the victory between the two candidates. Until October 5, deadline for the publication of surveys, The firms Maluk Research, Telcodata and Negocios y Negocios predicted a technical tie with percentage differences of less than two points. Meanwhile, Comunicaliza awarded the victory to Noboa with 41.5 percent over 36.4 for González, as did the Cedatos Gallup study, but with a difference of 12.2 percent.
Will there be a solution to the crisis in Ecuador?
For the analyst and political scientist, Oswaldo Moreno, Neither of the two alternatives guarantees the solution to the “largest institutional crisis.” of our history or that the catastrophe that the country is experiencing is not going to continue.”
Candidate González represents a past (Correism), which for a third of Ecuadorians was better, with experience in public administration and who can show that in her government the social and security figures in the country were better.
(Also: How organized President Guillermo Lasso really leaves the accounts in Ecuador)
For its part, Noboa has the advantage of being a young candidate who has not governed nor is identified with the last governments, but without experience in the management of the State, without party or structure and that has as a reference the business heritage of his father, who also tried to be president of the Republic on five occasions, as analyzed by Moreno in dialogue with EL TIEMPO.
“He appears accompanied by his wife, his mother and his aunt (Isabel Noboa, owner of the Nobis business emporium), “but managing or spending an inheritance is not the same as administering the State.”Explain.
In that same line, Analyst Juan Cuvi believes that if Noboa wins, “he could burn out faster than Guillermo Lasso. “That means committing forever to the political future that he proposed when he became an assemblyman in 2021.”
“He may be a victim of the same relaunch that projected him to the second round. The uncertainty and volatility that he would have to face are exactly the same that catapulted him from sixth to second place in the August elections. Anything can happen. Surprises will be the order of the day, surely more for worse than for better,” he describes in his opinion column for Plan V.
(In other news: Insecurity and economic crisis, the challenges of the next president of Ecuador)
Noboa appealed to young people, with which he considered that the way of doing politics in Ecuador has changed and that, starting today, the country will change.
“Youth today has a voice and has a vote, and neglected groups also matter and should be taken into account by the central government, which has abandoned its people in recent years,” said Noboa.
This is how the accounts go for the second round
In the first round of elections on August 20, Luisa González obtained 33.61 percent of the votes over Daniel Noboa, who received 23.47 percent of the vote.
The two finalists have tried to win every vote with offers focused on the fight against drug violence and drug trafficking. that have plunged Ecuador into the most serious crisis of insecurity in its history and that leaves the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio on the electoral path on the eve of the first electoral round.
(Keep reading: Ecuador: ‘While the State has been lost, crime has been well organized’)
According to Polibio Córdova, director of Cedatos, The problems that most concern Ecuadorians are insecurity, violence and crime, but it does not leave aside the political struggles, the wear and tear of the country’s institutions and corruption.
The chances of a resounding shipwreck are as real as they are high
The lack of full employment, unemployment, poverty, lack of health care, education, basic services and the country’s economic crisis are aspects that are part of a gloomy scenario that already results in the migration of at least 250,000 Ecuadorians, so far in 2023.
“The panorama resembles a minefield,” says Cuvi. “In the ungovernable country that Ecuador has become, the probabilities of a resounding shipwreck are as real as they are high.”
ANA LUCÍA ROMAN
TIME
QUITO
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