Millionaire businessman Daniel Noboa won the elections for the presidency of Ecuador at the age of 35 and became the youngest president in the history of a country mired in drug trafficking violence. Heir to a banana empire, Noboa won with 52% of the support over Luisa González (48%), bishop of former socialist president Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
With fireworks and car horns, hundreds of people celebrated the victory in the streets of Quito and Guayaquil, one of the worst setbacks for Correism, which lost a presidential runoff for the second consecutive time after years of popularity.
“Tomorrow we begin to work for this new Ecuador (…) to rebuild a country that has been seriously hit by violence, corruption and hatred,” said the next ruler from his home in Olón (southwest), accompanied of his pregnant wife and surrounded by a robust security scheme.
Until a few months ago, almost unknown in politics, Noboa assured that he will seek to “return peace” to the country. On her side, the evangelical González thanked God and acknowledged her defeat amid harangues from her supporters in Quito. “She has won the candidate they chose (…) Our deepest congratulations,” declared the 45-year-old leftist.
Drug cartels
Although the day passed without incident, the candidates voted with bulletproof vests, guards with rifles and a unanimous cry: to stop violence in the country of 16.9 million inhabitants. In recent years, Ecuador has become a center of operations for drug cartels with international tentacles that impose a regime of terror and leave thousands dead.
Some 100,000 soldiers and police were deployed throughout the country to guarantee security. The National Electoral Council registered a participation of 82% of the 13.4 million Ecuadorians summoned to exercise the mandatory vote.
Noboa will take power in December and will govern Ecuador for almost 17 months, until the term of right-wing President Guillermo Lasso ends. The unpopular outgoing president dissolved Congress and called for early elections to avoid dismissal in a political trial for corruption. Experts consider that the new mandate will be a kind of pre-campaign for the four-year election in 2025.
With white and purple flags, crowds celebrated Noboa’s victory in different parts of the country after elections marked by the thirst for change. The young vote, the wear and tear of the outgoing government and the growing “anti-correism” explain a campaign that rose like foam, analysts agree. Exiled in Belgium since 2017, Correa was sentenced to eight years in prison in Ecuador for corruption.
Son of one of the richest men in the country, reserved and with few smiles, the young politician tiptoed to the runoff and thus fulfilled his father’s frustrated dream. Banana magnate Álvaro Noboa ran unsuccessfully for the presidency five times.
Very active on social networks, the new president proposes to boost the economy with credit facilities and tax benefits for small and medium-sized businesses.
Like González, he promised a tough policy against drug gangs. His most famous proposal was to create prison ships to isolate prisoners from their criminal networks.
«There have been moments of anxiety, when you see that the numbers are still not with you (…) and hard moments, when they kill one of your opponents, and you say ‘well, I am saying similar things to him, maybe they kill me too,’” he said in an interview with AFP days after his victory in the first round.
3,600 murders
Fernando Villavicencio, former journalist and one of the presidential favorites for the first round on August 20, was shot as he left a rally in Quito on the eve of the elections. Later, seven of the prisoners involved in his crime were murdered in different prisons. Political violence also claimed the lives of seven other leaders.
Noboa has the challenge of combating the violence that leaves some 3,600 murders so far this year, according to the Ecuadorian Observatory of Organized Crime. Between 2018 and 2022, homicides quadrupled and rose to 26 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Gangs linked to Mexican and Colombian cartels confront each other and use the prisons as logistics offices, where bloody massacres have occurred. Since 2021, more than 460 inmates have died in these clashes.
“We have to give opportunities to new ways of doing politics (…) young people have their hope” in Noboa, said engineer Shirabel Loor (41 years old) after her victory.
Poverty is around 27% in this dollarized country, while the sum of unemployment and underemployment is 26%. In a Congress with an opposition majority, Noboa will face difficulties in making his reforms a reality.
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