Luisa González, the commitment of the party of former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa to return to power in Ecuador after eight years, has required the Army and the Police that they do not interfere with the scrutiny of the votes of the second round of the elections held this Sunday. The leftist candidate has denounced that her rival, “has sown voting acts” throughout the territory to “build the idea of a fraud before her imminent defeat.” González’s doubts and his party, citizen revolution, started hours after Noboa decreed the state of exception in seven of the 24 provinces of the country and Quito, the capital, with the argument that the security crisis deserves more military presence in the streets.
“They decree a state of exception when political parties will be in the computer centers receiving minutes. It is a way of force not to mobilize,” a small town in the coastal province of Manabí, where the candidate grew up in the countryside. Neither Noboa nor his campaign team have responded to the complaint.
Almost 14 million Ecuadorians expect the first official data of the scrutiny for 22.00 local time (five in the morning on Monday in peninsular Spain), without anyone being encouraged throughout the day to advance a result. In a scenario similar to that in the first round he gave the triumph to Noboa for less than 17,000 votes.
The president approached the Electoral Center of Oón in mid -morning, a coastal village of less than 5,000 inhabitants northwest of Guayaquil, where he has a luxurious residence. He voted with his two children, showed the photographers his marked ballot and retired without making statements. In the afternoon, he traveled to Quito to accompany the vote of his candidate for the vice presidency and then returned to Oón to wait for the results.
Last February, Noboa received the data from the Quito, convinced that he would win González for a wide margin, even enough not to need a tiebreaker. But reality showed him that his popularity was not as high as he supposed. He had been in the Government for a little more than a year, where he arrived to complete the failed mandate of another conservative, Guillermo Lasso, and failed to perceive his initial light that his initial light had lost brightness over the months. On the election night of February he read his tight triumph as a defeat and did not even go to thank his voters. This Sunday does not want surprises and will be isolated in its mansion on the coast, far from the political noise of the capitals.
Ecuador has lived since January 2024, by decision of Noboa, in a situation of “internal armed conflict.” This implies the police and military control of towns and cities and, since Saturday, a curfew between ten at night and five in the morning in seven provinces. Noboa’s attempts to stop violence have been a failure: the country today has the highest violent homicides rate in Latin America, with 38 homicides every 100,000 inhabitants, fueled by the drug trafficking. This Sunday, 56,000 police and 43,000 soldiers guard the voting centers, a gigantic deployment in a country that until only a few years ago was considered an island of peace in the middle of a convulsive region.
The perception of insecurity is palpable in large cities. Police helicopters flew Quito throughout the day “in permanent communication with the units on land in case of possible manifestations or irruptions to order,” says Mauricio Proaño, of the Aeropolitical Unit. The state of exception decreed by Noboa does not prohibit the “peaceful” demonstrations, leaving the assessment in the hands of the police.
The winner, whatever, will have a huge challenge. Insecurity and economic crisis and a very fragmented political scenario are in Ecuador a test for governance. Noboa does not have its own party, but has the favor of economic elites and military power, which has benefited from its hard hand policy.
González, meanwhile, has the support of former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017), exiled in Belgium for a condemnation of corruption that considers political persecution, and citizen revolution, the only party in Ecuador with national structure. González has said during the campaign that he is not in his plans to pardon Correa so that he can return to the country and that it will only be a “virtual advisor” in the distance.
