 "Ecuador votes in knife-edge presidential runoff amid crime surge, economic struggles")
Ecuadoreans are casting their votes on Sunday (April 13) in a fiercely contested presidential runoff that pits incumbent Daniel Noboa against leftist challenger Luisa Gonzalez, in a race shaped by surging violence and economic discontent.
Noboa, a 37-year-old businessman who assumed office in late 2023 after winning a special election, is campaigning on a platform of tough security measures and gradual economic recovery. His opponent, Gonzalez, a protégé of former president Rafael Correa, has promised a return to the expansive social programmes and statist policies that defined Correa’s decade in power.
Polls suggest the outcome could go either way. In the first round in February, Noboa edged past Gonzalez by fewer than 17,000 votes. Both camps have since mobilised tens of thousands of polling station observers, with Gonzalez, Noboa, and Correa all raising concerns about potential electoral fraud.
The vote takes place against the backdrop of a deepening security crisis. Murders, gun-running, fuel theft and extortion have all escalated over the past five years, driven by local gangs with ties to Mexico’s cartels and the Albanian mafia. The country’s ports have become key transit points for cocaine exports to Europe and North America, turning once-peaceful cities into battlegrounds.
Noboa has championed his ‘Phoenix’ security strategy, which includes military patrols, expanded port monitoring, and a crackdown on arms and narcotics. He says the plan is showing results, pointing to a 15 per cent drop in violent deaths last year. Speaking at a final rally in Guayaquil, he said voters would reject the “failed revolution” of Correa’s movement and back his vision of economic and institutional reform.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“Ecuadoreans want real change,” he told supporters. “This Sunday we will teach a lesson to that failed revolution, to those bad officials who attack us, to all the mafias that have taken our peace and to all the corruption that has stopped us moving ahead.”
A test of two political legacies
Gonzalez, 46, has pushed back, accusing Noboa of governing through improvisation and failing to improve daily life for ordinary Ecuadoreans.
“Has your life gotten better in these 15 months? Or worse?” she asked voters in a social media message. “This Sunday we choose between continuing to fall and getting up together to defend hope.”
Her platform includes promises to re-establish social programmes, improve healthcare access and bolster public security. She has pledged to add 20,000 new police officers and has drawn support from large sections of the Indigenous movement, although some Amazonian Indigenous groups have backed Noboa.
If elected, Gonzalez would become Ecuador’s first female president. She insists that she, not Correa, will govern, but some lawmakers from their Citizens’ Revolution party have hinted at a possible return for the former president, who currently lives in exile in Belgium after being sentenced in absentia to eight years for corruption.
The vote also carries implications for Ecuador’s economy. Noboa has forecast 4 oer cent growth this year and has promoted a mix of austerity and tax reforms, while pledging to attract private investment into the energy sector. Recent payouts to flood-hit businesses and victims of an oil spill have been seen as an effort to boost support ahead of the vote.
With polls closed by evening, preliminary results are expected after 6 p.m. local time (2300 GMT). Both candidates have said they will accept the outcome provided the process is fair, although Correa has already claimed—without evidence—that Noboa may try to cling to power.
As votes are tallied, Ecuadoreans are left to choose between two sharply different futures—one promising continuity and gradual reform, the other pledging a return to a more interventionist state.
With inputs from agencies
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