NOBOA WINS ECUADORIAN ELECTIONS

NOBOA WINS ECUADORIAN ELECTIONS


BY JENNIFER NWOSU 

Ecuadorians voted for 10 hours on Sunday with no reports of violence in the presidential elections.

In a country gripped by a bloody drug war and a rash of political assassinations that cut short the bid of a popular candidate, the election has been hailed as successful.

Some 100,000 police and soldiers were deployed to keep the vote safe, while the two major candidates, Noboa and Gonzalez both cast their votes in bulletproof vests just weeks after a rival was murdered.

The main concerns of Ecuadorians, according to recent polls, are crime and violence in a country where the murder rate quadrupled in the four years to 2022.

The bloodbath has spilled into the streets, with gangs dangling headless corpses from city bridges and detonating car bombs outside police stations in a show of force.

In August, the violence claimed the life of anti-graft and anti-cartel journalist and presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, mowed down in a barrage of submachine-gun fire after a campaign speech.

He had been polling in second place.

A state of emergency was declared after Villavicencio’s assassination, and Noboa and Gonzalez both campaigned, and voted, with heavy security details.

Daniel Noboa was elected to only 16 months in office — completing the term of incumbent Guillermo Lasso, who called a snap vote to avoid possible impeachment for alleged embezzlement.

Noboa is the son of one of Ecuador’s richest men, who himself has five failed presidential bids to his name.

Ecuador has a poverty rate of 27 percent, with a quarter of the population unemployed or holding down an informal job.

Opinion polls list unemployment as voters’ second concern.

Noboa has promised “progress for everyone” and vowed to prioritize job creation.

Gonzalez was the handpicked candidate of socialist ex-president Rafael Correa, who governed from 2007 to 2017 and lives in exile in Belgium to avoid serving an eight-year prison term for graft — another major concern in the country.

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