2023-08-21 05:48:19
Left-leaning candidate Luisa Gonzalez and businessman Daniel Noboa are entering the second round of the presidential election in Ecuador. After counting more than 70 percent of the votes, the 45-year-old Gonzales was clearly ahead with 33 percent, as the election commission announced on Sunday (local time) in the capital Quito. The 35-year-old Noboa, son of the entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Alvaro Noboa, surprisingly came up with 24 percent.
“We’re celebrating because we’re making history, even though so many of us have been ignored. Today we’re starting to paint a different story,” Gonzalez told supporters at an event in southern Quito. Gonzales is considered a protégé of former President Rafael Correa, who has been convicted of corruption. Noboa declared that the Ecuadorian people won. “The candidate of the youth, of people who are looking for hope, who want to change Ecuador, has won.” He is looking forward to the runoff once morest Gonzalez, which is scheduled for October 15.
The elections had been marred by the assassination of a candidate. The candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who had declared the fight once morest corruption, was killed at a campaign event. Nevertheless, his party won 16 percent of the votes on Sunday. After the assassination, journalist Christian Zurita was nominated as a substitute candidate, but the name Villavicencio appeared on the ballots, since they had been printed before his assassination. Villavicencio was a bitter opponent of ex-President Correa. Zurita, along with several other candidates, conceded defeat on Sunday night.
All eight candidates for the post of head of state had advertised themselves with promises to take action once morest organized crime and appeared in the election campaign, some in bulletproof vests. The South American country with around 18 million inhabitants is struggling with an increasing wave of violence and the growing influence of drug cartels.
In 2022, there were 26 homicides per 100,000 people in Ecuador. The country has overtaken Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. Late on Friday evening, the mayor of the coastal town of La Libertad in western Ecuador says he survived an assassination attempt. On the previous Monday, unknown gunmen shot dead a local politician from Correa’s Civic Revolution party in the north of the country.
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