Son of wealthy businessman elected youngest president of Ecuador | Abroad

At 35, Noboa will be the country’s youngest president ever. He is the son of one of the richest Ecuadorians, Álvaro Noboa, who became a multi-millionaire with his banana empire and also ran for president several times. However, his attempts were never successful.

Daniel Noboa, as leader of the recently founded party ADN, promised during his campaign to interest foreign investors in Ecuador, create jobs for young people and transport dangerous criminals to prison ships. After his victory on Sunday evening, he said: “Tomorrow we will start working for this new Ecuador, we will work to rebuild a country that suffers greatly from violence, corruption and hatred.”

Progressive lawyer González and Noboa had to face each other in a second round of elections on Sunday, after neither candidate had received enough votes to win immediately in the first round of elections in August. At the time, Noboa received significantly fewer votes with 23 percent than González, who then managed to rally 34 percent of the voters. In the second round, Noboa received 52.3 percent of the votes against 47.7 percent for González.

In that first round, 16 percent of the votes went to journalist Christian Zurita, who replaced the murdered presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. Just before his death, a week and a half before the elections, Villavicencio was still in second place in the polls, behind González.

The elections were the result of an emergency coup by outgoing President Guillermo Lasso. He announced early elections when impeachment proceedings were initiated against him. Noboa will complete Lasso’s original term of office – until 2025. This will be followed by further elections.

Ecuador, until recently one of the few safe countries in South America, has seen drug-related violence increase sharply in recent years. The Choneros, linked to the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, and Los Lobos, linked to the Mexican cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, are fighting a bloody battle in Ecuador to gain control of the drug supply and distribution routes.

Since the murder of Villavicencio, who advocated a tough approach to drug cartels, the country has been in a state of emergency. The two presidential candidates also regularly appeared wearing bulletproof vests during the campaign.