President Daniel Noboa and his left -wing challenger Luisa González are hard against the drug violence in Ecuador almost right In the first round of Sunday’s presidential elections. As a result, a decisive second round is needed in April to determine who will be the leader of the South American country in the coming four years.
After counting three -quarters of the votes, Noboa can count on around 44.5 percent of voters and that means a surprisingly small difference with González, who for the time being comes to slightly less than 44 percent of the votes. The other fourteen candidates play no significant role.
Noboa had closed the boundaries this weekend for fear that “armed groups would make attempts to disrupt the country” and there was an alcohol ban on elections as usual. According to the CNE Election Council, the election day eventually went without significant incidents.
In the previous elections in November 2023, Noboa and González also competed against each other in the decisive second round. Then Noboa received almost 52 percent of the votes and González more than 48 percent.
Son of Banana millionaire
The 37-year-old Noboa is the son of a banana billionaire and was elected to Ecuador ever in the early elections of Ecuador ever fifteen months ago. He then won mainly by acting hard against the explosion of drug violence. After more than a year in power, Noboa has been able to discuss the necessary successes during his election campaign in recent weeks.
For example, he managed to reduce the record number of murders from 2023, the year before his appointment, by 15 percent and prevent new outbursts of violence in the crowded prisons. But the number of almost 7,000 murders from last year is still historically high and the numbers for January also promise little good.
That is why he cannot count on the trust of the majority of voters for the time being to continue his hard approach in the next four years with that of President Nayib Bukele compared to the Far Salvador. “A year is not nearly enough to solve all problems,” he emphasized time and time again during his campaign.
The previously relatively peaceful Ecuador has become an important transit port and storage site for drugs in recent years due to its strategic location between Colombia and Peru. In combination with the weak police force and the widespread institutional corruption, local gangs that are affiliated with the large Mexican drug cartels and the Italian and Albanian Mafia provide a spiral of violence.
Human rights
To be able to cope with internationally operating drug gangs, Noboa is constantly extending the state of emergency in the coastal provinces and structurally uses the army. Critics accuse him that human rights are being violated on a large scale, with the death of four boys from Guayaquil as the low point at the end of last year.
They were arrested by soldiers when they were playing a game and more than two weeks later their burnt corpses were found near a military base. That lurid case is still being investigated, but has led to many protests.
Noboa, who was born in Miami and therefore also the American nationality, is looking for former president Rafael Correa, who was in power in Ecuador from 2007 to 2017, emphatically the rapprochement with the United States and Donald Trump. For example, he was present at Trump’s inauguration last month, he accepts deportation flights from the US and there is military cooperation in the fight against drug violence.
He also imposed Mexico at the beginning of this month, with which he has been involved in a serious diplomatic conflict since last spring, following the announcement of Trump import duties of 27 percent.
‘Correísmo’
His counter -candidate in the second round, Luisa Gonzaléz, is the current leader of the left -wing movement under Correa, who went to Belgium due to a conviction for corruption. The former president still remotely intensively interferes with politics and González has to do her best to prove that she can take an independent course.
Just like Noboa, González also says he tackles the drug violence hard, but she promises to continue to respect human rights. In addition, she wants to make large -scale social investments in the regions where the drug gangs are active to try to remove the breeding ground for crime. And it is precisely in those regions that she got more votes than Noboa.
But she has to compete with the enormous aversion that has a considerable part of the electorate of the authoritarian correa and the fear that Ecuador with the return of his politics, it Correísmoslide in the direction of the Venezuela of Nicolás Maduro.
Energy crisis
In addition to the approach to drug violence, voters from the new president also expect the economy to be pulled out of the slop and that there will be a solution for the energy crisis.
Due to the persistent drought in the last months of last year, the hydroelectric power stations stopped and Ecuadorians sat at the low point of the crisis for up to fourteen hours a day without electricity. If it had not started to rain in December and the daily hours of power failed to come to an end, Noboa would probably have lost out of González in the first round.
But now both candidates can once again try to convince the pretty apathetic voters of their approach to drug crime, creating jobs and how they want to prevent new electricity problems.