Daniel Noboa comfortably wins the elections in Ecuador

Buenos AiresEcuadorian President Daniel Noboa has renewed his mandate. this Sunday at the polls With almost 56% of the vote, she faced Rafael Correa's successor, Luisa González, who obtained just over 44% of the vote and has said she does not recognize the results, alleging electoral fraud. The progressive candidate has announced that she will ask the National Electoral Council (CNE) to conduct a recount and open the polls: "Ecuador is experiencing a dictatorship," she proclaimed from the electoral headquarters in Quito, and spoke of the "most grotesque fraud in history." The president of the CNE, Diana Atamaint, was quick to confirm the results that declared Noboa the winner and said that "democracy is strengthened when the voice of the people is respected."

For his part, Noboa thanked his team and all those who had entrusted him with their vote: "Today Ecuador has voted for a young president who has worked to improve the lives of Ecuadorians," were his first words from his home on Olón beach, accompanied by his mother - Annabella Azín, ad honorem– and his wife, First Lady Lavinia Valbonesi, both key players in his campaign. "Ecuador is changing," he said. "It has already chosen a different path, and that path will be for our children to live better than we did, for future generations to have more dignified, fair, and transparent lives," he added. "Ecuador wants to be different, not walk back in time," he concluded.

Unexpected results

Although the victory of either candidate was not clear, much closer results than those obtained were expected, just as it happened in the first round of February, where Noboa edged out González by just 0.15% of the vote. It was estimated that the votes of the indigenous movement—the third-largest force in the first round—would go to González, but in the end, this did not happen, a surprising development according to analyst Pablo Medina, who told ARA that the Correa candidate had reached her peak in the first round and that it was Noboa who won by more than a million votes.

In this sense, and given that it is such a wide-ranging dispute, Medina considers González's claim of fraud to be "regrettable" since, while it is true that "in every electoral process in Ecuador there are some irregularities," such as incorrectly signed documents or problems with the recount, these are still a given. In his opinion, in fact, it is "virtually impossible" to speak of fraud, also taking into account that there has been a deployment of international observers. González obviously has the right to request a verification of the ballot boxes and a recount, but according to the expert, "it is highly unlikely that there was an irregularity of that level and that, therefore, the results would change."

The challenges of the new government

One of the first challenges Noboa will face in this new term is governability: the legislative branch is fragmented, and the majority group in the National Assembly is, precisely, that of Correísmo. But analyst Andrea Suárez believes that, having obtained such a landslide victory at the polls, Noboa "has room to legitimize himself" both politically and institutionally, as well as in the eyes of the public. A closer result, as expected, would have made negotiations more difficult, according to the expert, who cites as a second challenge the fact that Noboa is not a new president: "For Ecuadorians, his second term begins tomorrow." In the eyes of the public, Noboa does not have the leeway "to position himself or project the future," but rather "must provide continuity to his administration," and in this sense, "citizen demands and expectations are very high," notes Suárez.

And not only the expectations but also the priorities of Ecuadorians are clear: it is necessary to direct the dramatic insecurity crisis that the country is going through due to the rise in drug trafficking and organized crime. January of this year was the most violent in Ecuador's history, with a total of 793 homicides. Although Noboa has promoted a "heavy-handed" policy during his short term, incorporating the Armed Forces into public safety management and repeatedly declaring states of emergency, the results have not been as expected. Therefore, the president plans to go further and has already announced that he will ask for help from the US private security company Blackwater and that he will move forward with a project to build maximum-security prisons.