Businessman and billionaire son Daniel Noboa became the youngest president in Ecuador’s history on Sunday, at age 35, winning the second round of the presidential vote with 52.3% of the vote, promising to to get “immediately to work” to bring “peace” to a country ravaged by the violence of drug trafficking.
Her opponent Luisa Gonzalez, heir to ex-president Rafael Correa (2007-2017), collected 47.70% of the votes and recognized her defeat even before the end of the count, congratulating “sincerely the winner”. In the process, the National Electoral Council (CNE) proclaimed Mr. Noboa the winner.
“Tomorrow we will start working for this new Ecuador […] to rebuild a country that has been seriously affected by violence, corruption and hatred,” commented the president-elect.
“From tomorrow, hope begins to work,” he promised, thanking “God, my wife, my parents and all the people who were part of a new, young, improbable political project, including the objective was to bring a smile back to the country.”
“Out into the street”
As tirelessly repeated during his campaign, he once again “committed to restoring peace to a country, to restoring education and jobs to the many people who are looking for them, to giving peace to families who cannot get out in the street “.
This victory was greeted by concerts of horns in the streets of the capital.
The vote, announced in recent days as very close by the polls, took place without major incident, with a participation rate of more than 82.33%. It marks a heavy defeat for Correismo, the main political force in Ecuador for around fifteen years, while the shadow of ex-President Correa (in exile because he was convicted of corruption in his country) hung over the vote.
Mme Gonzalez, 45, arrived on August 20 at the top of the first round with 34% of the votes. Benjamin of the election, Daniel Noboa created a surprise by taking second place (23%) in a campaign marked by the assassination of one of the main candidates, Fernando Villaviciencio, a former journalist with an anti-corruption speech.
This election took place “in a climate of insecurity and political violence imposed by gangs linked to international organized crime”, summarized the local press on Sunday.
Once considered an island of peace in Latin America, the country of 18 million inhabitants, located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest producers of cocaine, has been overtaken by an unprecedented wave of violence linked to crime. organized and drug trafficking.
Noboa Corporation
Daniel Noboa grew up behind the scenes of the electoral campaigns of his father, Alvaro Noboa, who made his fortune exporting bananas and ran unsuccessfully for president five times, notably against Rafael Correa in 2006.
Married and father of two children, this successful businessman studied at the best American universities before joining the family empire, the Noboa Corporation.
Smiling but initially reserved, with a sporty appearance, he promised “a firm hand” against criminal groups. To do this, he proposes the “militarization of ports and borders, to protect strategic export and trade routes”, or even to develop “citizen vigilance”.
Other major security projects: creating a national intelligence agency which will oversee all intelligence bodies, including the prison administration (SNAI), a “total disaster” according to him while the country’s prisons are the scene of recurring massacres between inmates of rival gangs.
The man calls himself “center left”, but this neoliberal embodies the Ecuadorian political elite from the world of private business and close to the right.
Its 76-page program contains four components, “social, economic, institutional and environmental”, and is based on a “comprehensive strategy” to tackle “the root causes of low economic growth and high levels of crime”, two related challenges according to him.
The man with the meager experience of two years as a deputy will have very little time to keep his promises. He will govern until the beginning of 2025, the end of the mandate of outgoing conservative President Guillermo Lasso who chose to call early elections to avoid his dismissal amid accusations of corruption.
Mr. Noboa will also have a lot to do to obtain a majority in the National Assembly, which is particularly fragmented, where he only has 13 deputies, compared to 48 for the Correist party, out of a total of 137 seats.