(Quito) With 52.1% of the vote, businessman and billionaire son Daniel Noboa became the youngest president in the history of Ecuador on Sunday, at age 35, promising to immediately ” to work” to bring “peace” to a country ravaged by the violence of drug trafficking.
Her opponent Luisa Gonzalez, heiress to ex-president Rafael Correa (2007-2017), collected 47.9% 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-designate, from his stronghold of Olon (west), on the Pacific coast.
“From tomorrow, hope begins,” he promised, alongside his pregnant wife, thanking “God, my wife, my parents and all the people who were part of a new political project, young, improbable, whose 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 with horn concerts in Quito, but without a major popular gathering.
The vote, announced in recent days as very close, 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.
PHOTO DOLORES OCHOA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
The vote takes place under the surveillance of nearly 100,000 military and police officers in total, who ensure the security of the 4,390 polling stations.
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 had 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. .
PHOTO ARIEL OCHOA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Presidential candidate Luisa Gonzalez of the Revolutionary Citizens Movement shows her ballot.
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 neo-liberal 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”. It intends to work to reduce poverty and increase employment through investment, the creation of small and medium-sized businesses, the reduction of bureaucracy and even access to credit. He also promised to “update” the minimum wage.
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.
The transfer of power with Mr. Lasso is scheduled for around December 10, but Mr. Noboa will go to the presidency on Tuesday to meet the outgoing head of state who “congratulated” him on his victory.