Incumbent Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa of the National Democratic Action Party took 56% of the vote in the second round of elections taking place on April 13. With 95% of the votes counted, Luisa González, candidate of the social democratic Citizens’ Revolution Party gained 44% of the vote.

Polling had shown the two candidates tied at 44% each. First round voting on February 9 had Noboa taking 44.2% of the vote and González, 43.9% ─ with Leónidas Iza, leader of the indigenous Pachakutik party, securing 5.29% of the vote.  His second-round support for González appears to have been inconsequential.

Noboa took office following a second round of elections in October 2023 that gave him 52% of the vote and González 48%. He was completing the term of President Guillermo Lasso, a conservative former banker who had resigned because of bribery charges. Noboa will serve until 2029.

González appeared to have been astonished at the results, and with good reason; the two candidates had been evenly matched until now.  She exclaimed that, “Today, we do not recognize the results. I denounce before my people, before the media, and before the world, that Ecuador is living through a dictatorship, and we are confronting the most grotesque electoral fraud.”

González on April 11 denounced the Noboa government for replacing the military security team assigned to protect her, claiming that the action “puts my life at risk and that of my family.” Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio had been assassinated while campaigning in 2023. Since then, “more than 30 politicians, judicial authorities, and journalists have been killed,” according to one report.

On the day before the elections, Noboa decreed a “state of exception” in seven provinces, in sections of Quito and in prisons. The measure, referring to “internal armed conflict,” calls for curfews and mobilization of the police and military forces.

The election results cast doubt on the legitimacy of Ecuador’s democracy and portend troubles ahead for Ecuador’s already beleaguered majority population. Crime has reached record heights along with narcotrafficking, militarization, and aggressive U.S. intervention. Adding to a bleak outlook is the dissolution of the progressive legacy of Rafael Correa’s presidency (2007-2017) that gave rise to the Citizens’ Revolution movement and González’s candidacy.

Born in Miami, Daniel Noboa studied at three U.S. universities and benefits from family businesses worth $1.3 billion. His campaign featured “promises to stop the violence, finish with electric power backouts and raise people’s purchasing power through neoliberal measures,” according to one report. The BBC suggests that, “Noboa has tried to reposition himself, with a campaign centered on reinforcing his profile as a strong leader confronting the possible return of the left to Ecuadorian politics.”.

A recent accounting places Ecuador’s most recent murder rate at 38.8 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, up from 6.45 per 100,000 in 2015, under Rafael Correa’s government. Seizures of illegal drugs in Ecuador, mainly cocaine, are unprecedented ─ 33% higher in 2024 than in 2023. Ecuador produces much cocaine, but is also a throughway for Colombian-produced illicit drugs on their way to Europe and the United States.

News surfaced during the campaign that authorities had seized cocaine from banana containers shipped to Europe by Noboa Trading Company. Lanfranco Holdings S.A., co-owned by President Noboa and his brother, claims 51% equity in that company.

Ecuador’s GDP is falling. An ongoing energy crisis stems from drought and deteriorating infrastructure. Unemployment has increased and the poverty rate presently is 28%. The Noboa government recently obtained a $4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

Daniel Naboa attended Donald Trump’s Inauguration as U.S. president. Meeting with Trump in Florida on March 29, Noboa requested U.S. designation of irregular armed groups in Ecuador as terrorist organizations. Beginning in 2024, the U.S. military has been preparing to deploy warships, weapons and personnel to Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands.

Plans are afoot for a new U.S. naval base at Manta. President Correa had closed down a U.S. airbase there in 2009. Naboa is seeking to modify Ecuador’s Correa-era Constitution so as to permit foreign military bases. Agreements are in place for the arrival in Ecuador of U.S. troops, possible soon.

The debacle of this election highlights a contrast. On the one hand there are the achievements of Correa’s presidency and goals of González’s campaign and on the other, the record of Naboa’s government and of U.S. intervention.

Analyst Stansfield Smith, in a 2017 report, surveyed accomplishments of the Correa’s government. They include: taxation of the rich;, non-payment of illegitimate debt; steady and significant GDP growth; doubling of Ecuador’s minimum wage; reduction of the poverty rate from 37.6% to 22% (rural poverty from 61% to 35%); construction of 31 new hospitals, either completed or in progress; and the addition of 34,000 new health workers.

Commentator Irene León, writing in La Jornada on April 12,  summarized goals articulated by the Citizens’ Revolution candidate. González “proposes an ethical pact to pacify the country, as well as to restore the democratic fabric and institutionality destroyed in recent years … [She] proposes a foreign policy characterized by the return to regional integration and multilateralism, the revitalization of the national economy and production, and the articulation of State policies around economic, geopolitical, social, cultural and gender justice, among others.”

Just as Luisa González’s electoral defeat will surely discourage hopes for a revived Citizens’ Revolution movement, it will also encourage U.S. intervention. Analyst William Blum recalls that, prior to Correa’s government, U.S. agents had “infiltrated, often at the highest levels, almost all political organizations of significance, from the far left to the far right.”

Now with Noboa in charge, old ways are back. For instance, the Naboa government and U.S.-based Erik Prince recently agreed that armed mercenaries hired by Prince’s Academi Company ─ formerly Blackwater ─ will be carrying out “war on crime” in Ecuador.

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