Some 13.7 million Ecuadorians decide this Sunday at the polls if Daniel Noboa remains in the presidency or closes a seven -year historical cycle and the Correism returns to the Carondellat palace by Luisa González. The latest surveys talk about a tie But different analysts leave the window open to a surprise on Sunday night. The polls are usually blind to the hidden vote. The elections have more than regional relevance. They are the first elections that have been made since Donald Trump returned to the White House and under the effect of two recent sensitive political measures to Ecuador y Latin America In general: the Immigrant deportationswhereby some 3,000 Ecuadorians have returned to the country, and the Tariff war.
Noboa has boasted his good harmony with the Republican billionaire to the point of visiting him in USA and take the occasion photos. It is, together with the Argentine Javier Milei, the president who with the greatest emphasis tries to privilege an association with Washington. Throughout the campaign, the possibility of strengthening the alliance with the US in all plans has highlighted. Ecuador has been lacking a quarter of a century of its own currency. The dollarization of the economy It is a force shirt held by the right and accepted with resignation by other sectors. Noboa wants to go further and, if re -elected, reform the Magna Carta for that return the military bases of the United Statesprohibited in the text that the then president promoted in 2009, Rafael Correa.
Noboa’s Trumpism can become a boumeran before the electorate. The measures taken by the US threaten a significant part of Ecuadorian exporters and the work of a precarious society. The banana industrywho has Álvaro Noboa, father of the president as one of his kings, is one of those who will soon feel the impact of tariffs. González did not miss the opportunity to point out the weakness of the government. Noboa, he said, “went to talk to Trump, we have 10% of tariffs, it is very serious because it will affect Ecuadorian families that depend on the export of bananas, shrimp and cocoa.” The fall in the price of oil will also resent the economy of this country. “This is the size of the cost that we are going to pay Because of Trump’s mistake, “said Washington Herrera, columnist of ‘El Comercio’, of Quito.
The commercial balance of Ecuador with the United States has been deficient in 2024 in the order of the 644.5 million dollars. With the electoral campaign as a backdrop, Noboa sent its foreign minister, Gabriela Sommerfeld, To ask for a beneficial exception of the great partner. His meeting with the United States commercial representative, Jamieson Greer, was presented as a success. “Greer highlighted the decision of the Ecuadorian government of facilitate the greatest access to US exportsby eliminating the barriers of entry to the Ecuadorian market, “said exteriors and Correismo barely saw a sign of claudication. The United States wants to sell more cars in a country where 50% of the market is in the hands of China.
The other problems
The contest has not been able to escape in the last stretch of the proselytizing campaign of global tensions. Until then, the discussions between Noboa and González turned with roughness around issues that cause deep anguish in society, especially Violence in big cities. In 2023, Ecuador was the country with the highest murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants: 47. The president declared in January 2024 the “internal armed conflict” and launched the armed forces to the street to defeat to drug traffickers deeply enquisted in all state structures. Victoria’s songs against Noboa’s crime do not fit reality. In January of this year, 793 homicides and 736 were registered in February. The two content are accused of having “friends” in the ranks of the underworld.
Owner of a surname that is synonymous with economic power, Noboa made his youthful impetus a value. Overdacked an audacity that did not result in results. If at the beginning of his offensive against crime he had a popularity of 70%, that favoritism was diluted not only because of the failure of security policy but also because of the combination of other factors such as contraction in two points of the economy, in 2024, The absence of promised investments and repeated blackouts. Energy cuts have resurfaced in recent weeks in Guayaquil and other cities. The noise of light generators of light has changed the sound landscape. The attachment to Trump’s rhetoric has a limit for Nobo: is obliged to accept climate change. Ecuador suffered a great drought last year and in the present the brand of the environmental disaster came from the sky, with rains that caused dozens of dead and 19 overflowing rivers.
Time change?
In 2017, Correa believed to have guaranteed the continuity of his project. But Lenin Moreno, his heir, turned his back immediately and launched a process of reversion of the policies that it previously exalted. Guillermo Lasso And then Noboa deepened that path and is what allows the official candidate to present this second shift as a new and crucial disjunctive between “populism” and “democracy”. This contradiction was resolved in his favor in the presidential 2023 when he defeated González. The effectiveness of that slogan does not seem to be the same in these elections. The main media insist despite Ecuador to face a crossroads that will determine the future. “I want to ask you to have memory, Remember what we live between 2006 and 2017: A time when fear was state policy, the press was persecuted, the opposition was humiliated and dismantled civil society. No, not all governments are the same. Not everyone wants to silence you. But one did. And that regime wants to return, “Sofia Cordero warned in the newspaper ‘La Hora’.
Demonization speech is no longer so infallible. Noboa barely exceeded 0.17% to the Corroist in the first round. On that occasion, González did not yet have the support of the indigenous movementthat historically hated Correa, or other center and right sectors that this time resolved not to accompany the “system” candidate. Beyond the agreements between party domes there is also social fatigue, and can be decisive. About 5.2 million Ecuadorians live with $ 91 per month.
With exiled belt in Belgium, his followers decided not to stumble three times with the same stone. In 2021, Andrés Aruz lost to Lasso in the ballotage for five points of difference: “anticorreism” was on that occasion a force greater than that of the former president and the disenchanted party. The same happened to González in 2023. She this time sought unusual agreements to your right and leftfollowing the road map of the broad consensus designed by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to overcome the ultra -right jair Bolsonaro, in 2018. Of course Ecuador is not Brazil or González is Lula.
