How do you explain the dazzling triumph of a 35-year-old millionaire outsider, with almost no political experience? Daniel Noboa was elected this Sunday as the youngest president of a country shaken by drug trafficking violence, that cries out for a change.
Heir to a banana empire, On Sunday he obtained 52% of the votes over the 48% of the leftist Luisa González, bishop of former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017), and thus dealt an unusual blow to his well-oiled socialist forces.
This is the second consecutive setback of “correism” in presidential elections in the last six years. Before, he had already seen one of his most controversial constitutional reforms disappear through a popular consultation: indefinite reelection.
Correa, who boasts of having triumphed more than a dozen times at the polls, has been exiled in Belgium since the end of his government. He was accused of corruption and sentenced to eight years in prison in absentia.
(Also read: Elections in Ecuador: Daniel Noboa wins second round of presidential elections)
For his Citizen Revolution movement, falling to an outsider is a “significant defeat,” political scientist Santiago Cahuasquí, from the SEK International University, tells AFP.
Noboa’s victory “is the ratification that Correism is suffering a process of erosion,” he says.
How to explain Noboa’s triumph and the new defeat for Correism? Keys.
1. Ecuadorians were looking for a change
Self-proclaimed center-left and supported by right-wing forces, For some analysts, Noboa embodies the cry for change from an electorate fed up with the dichotomy between Correismo and anti-Correismo. and the unpopularity of the outgoing government of Guillermo Lasso (right).
Ecuadorians were looking for “a candidate who does not obey, precisely, traditional politics, that comes out of ordinary logic” around the figure of Correa, notes Cahuasquí.
Noboa, with barely two years of political experience in Congress, was last in the polls. But before the first round, an applauded participation in a debate that he attended wearing a bulletproof vest after the assassination of the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio catapulted him to the second round.
(You can read: The wave of violence continues in Ecuador: the prosecutor is murdered and the former mayor is kidnapped)
Noboa’s comeback “is a reflection of the profound transformation of the electorate,” says the political scientist.
The erosion of Correismo comes from a long time ago, explains analyst David Chávez, since the recent election is a “copy” of that of 2021, when Lasso won over Andrés Arauz, another Correa bishop, also by four points.
In addition, there is “a consistent process of rightwardization of Ecuadorian society,” says Chávez, from the Central University.
Noboa will govern Ecuador for almost 17 months, until the end of Lasso’s term. The outgoing president dissolved Congress to evade impeachment in an impeachment trial for corruption, leading to early elections.
The short presidential term and a Congress with an opposition majority with Correism at the head, will be the first obstacles for the new president.
(You may be interested: Why did several congressmen ask Joe Biden for sanctions against Rafael Correa?)
2. Noboa connected with the new generations
Noboa connected with the new generations. On social networks he defended access to university and sold himself as an alternative for change. He avoided mentioning Correa too much and surrounding himself with his enemies, while González had a hard time distancing himself from the ghost of the former president.
“Because of its youth, it is the best solution for everyone,” Andrés García, a 29-year-old university student who trusts Noboa’s promise to prioritize employment, told AFP.
But analysts warn that it will not be easy for him to govern.
“He is going to have problems with the Assembly because of the strong bloc that Correismo has,” says Simón Pachano, political scientist at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso).
(Keep reading: How organized President Guillermo Lasso really leaves the accounts in Ecuador)
In recent years, Ecuador has become a major drug exporter, and local traffickers have partnered with Mexican and Colombian cartels that spread death and terror.
González announced that his party will support in Congress “legal reforms for security, for health, for education (…) as long as it does not involve privatizing” resources.
3. The erosion of Correismo in Ecuador
On the contrary, Correismo had problems getting new votes due to its lack of self-criticism and inability to renew itself, experts say.
For Chávez, the strategy of appealing to the figure of his maximum leader reached a “limit”, despite the fact that on two occasions Correa was elected in a single round, something unprecedented in the country.
However, he still maintains loyal followers that allow him to compete “with more or less favorable results” in the elections, he adds.
(You can read: Correismo will be the first force in the Ecuadorian Congress after the elections)
He will have at least 50 of the 137 seats in the new Parliament, in addition to being in charge of the mayors of Quito and Guayaquil, the main cities, but There are already “signs of exhaustion” in Correismo, the analyst said.
The Citizen Revolution “is a movement that continues to be a prisoner of Rafael Correa,” whose powerful figure means that “no other type of leadership (…) can come to embody the aspirations of the people,” says Cahuasquí.
The defeat of Correism, in fact, had been announced since last August 20, when its presidential candidate could not triumph decisively in a first round of voting.The reluctance to formalize alliances with related groups also influenced this Sunday’s result.
In the first electoral round, when eight candidates participated, González obtained 33.61% of the votes, compared to 23.47% for Noboa, who surprisingly became a finalist after leaving behind six other candidates, the majority of They are anticorreistas.
Noboa added the support of the right but, above all, of anti-correism to defeat González which, for its part, failed to form alliances with social organizations.
(In other news: Ecuador votes in favor of stopping oil exploitation in an area of greatest biodiversity)
For political analyst Ramiro Aguilar, “the numbers were nowhere to be found” for an eventual victory for Correism, since González lost the runoff in the first round.
In that vote, the professor recalled in statements to Efe, Noboa was second, but he had the support of the anti-Correísta movement Construye which had obtained 17%.
Also the nine percentage points of Jan Topic and the seven of Otto Sonnenholzner, both also critical of the Citizen Revolution, the party led by Correa, said Aguilar, who believes that Correismo was also punished by the country’s indigenous movement, which was very critical of the Correa Government.
The economist Pablo Dávalos also considered that the Citizen Revolution “made the mistake of entering the elections without expanding its base of social agreements.”
Her distance from environmentalism opposed to extractivism (oil and mining) and Luisa González’s “pro-life” position, contrary to the country’s feminist groups, also contributed to the fact that Correism’s candidacy did not gain significant support, Dávalos said.
The priorities that the Noboa government will have
According to the vice president-elect, Verónica Abad, The first major action of the Government that the elected president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, will lead will be to call for a popular consultation on economic issues and security to begin to take the country out of the “darkness” in which it finds itself
The first step is the popular consultation
“The first step is the popular consultation, which will lead us, without a doubt, to be able to fulfill what we have put on the table for Ecuadorians at this moment: employment and security,” he said.
With the consultation, which they plan to convene in the first hundred days of the Government, they seek to “recover institutionality”, toughen penalties, segment prisons, introduce faceless judges, independent juries, for which reforms are required in the criminal code.
(Also: Ecuador: ‘While the State has been lost, crime has been well organized’)
On economic issues, he noted that they are seeking to lower taxes in some sectors, such as construction, and to encourage tax issues to attract investment to the country.
In addition, they will opt for legal decrees because – he said – “there is no time to lose” since Noboa will govern until May 24, 2025.
INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL
TIME
*With agencies
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