Noboa wins Ecuador presidential race, pledges to rebuild country

by AP16 October 2023

Daniel Noboa won Ecuador’s presidential runoff election Sunday held amid unprecedented violence that even claimed the life of a candidate.

With more than 97% of the votes counted, electoral officials said Noboa had 52.1%, compared to 47.9% for Luisa González, a leftist lawyer and ally of exiled former President Rafael Correa. González conceded defeat during a speech before supporters in which she also urged Noboa to fulfill his campaign promises.
Noboa, 35, will lead the South American country during a period that drug trafficking-related violence has left Ecuadorians wondering when, not if, they will be victims. Their uneasiness has prompted them to continuously watch their backs and limit how often they leave home.

After results showed him victorious, Noboa thanked Ecuadorians for believing in “a new political project, a young political project, an improbable political project.”
He said his goal is “to return peace to the country, to give education to the youth again, to be able to provide employment to the many people who are looking for it.” To that end, Noboa said, he will immediately begin to work to “rebuild a country that has been seriously hit by violence, corruption and hatred.”
The incoming president’s term will run only through May 2025, which is what remains of the tenure of President Guillermo Lasso. He cut his term short when he dissolved the country’s National Assembly in May as lawmakers carried out impeachment proceedings against him over alleged improprieties in a contract by a state-owned company.

Ecuadorians — young and old, rich and poor, city and rural dwellers — had a universal demand throughout the campaign: safety. Noboa is now expected it to meet it, but the magnitude of the problem coupled with the brevity of the upcoming presidential term might prove an impossible task for the U.S.-educated man who will become Ecuador’s youngest president.
“I think there would be a very slim chance that even the best equipped president could reverse Ecuador’s security crisis within 18 months — it’s such a short period of time — and neither of these candidates was the best equipped. Noboa certainly not,” said Will Freeman, a fellow on Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “His proposals on security were erratic, and they gave the sense that he was improvising.”
Violence erupted in Ecuador roughly three years ago with a rise in criminal activity linked to cocaine trafficking, and the government’s inability to tackle it was laid bare in August with the assassination of presidential candidate and anti-corruption crusader Fernando Villavicencio.

Since then, other politicians and political leaders have been killed or kidnapped, car bombs have exploded in multiple cities, including the capital, Quito, and inmates have rioted in prisons. Earlier this month, seven men whom authorities identified as suspects in Villavicencio’s slaying were killed while in custody.
A large group of military and police officers as well as private security guards protected Noboa when he voted in Olón, a community on the country’s central Pacific coast. He wore a bulletproof vest.
(Source AP)

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