Ecuador’s market-friendly President Daniel Noboa has won re-election, seeing off leftist rival Luisa González in a run-off vote on Sunday.
Noboa, the 37-year-old son of a billionaire banana magnate, won 55.8 per cent of the vote to González’s 44.4 per cent, with 90 per cent of the vote counted.
Pollsters had predicted a tighter race after fewer than 17,000 votes separated the pair in February’s first round.
The president of Ecuador’s national electoral council, Diana Atamaint, said the results showed an “irreversible trend” in Noboa’s favour.
“Ecuador is changing,” Noboa said after his victory. “That path will mean our children will live better lives than we did,” he added, speaking at his estate on the country’s Pacific coast.
González, a former lawmaker with close ties to socialist former president Rafael Correa, called for a recount.
“We will ask for a recount and for the ballot boxes to be reopened,” González said in a speech in Quito, the capital. Correa — who lives in Belgium to avoid serving an eight-year sentence for a corruption conviction — alleged fraud in a number of posts on social media.
Noboa said that González’s claims were “embarrassing”, given his 13-point margin of victory, adding: “Ecuadorians have already spoken, now we have to get to work.”
Noboa will now serve a full four-year term, having won the presidency in a snap election in October 2023 triggered when then-president Guillermo Lasso dissolved congress to avoid impeachment proceedings. Noboa also defeated González in that election.
His immediate priority will be to tackle the unprecedented security crisis roiling the country, with rival drug-trafficking groups violently fighting over cocaine shipping routes.
On the campaign trail, Noboa touted the success of “Plan Phoenix”, a gamut of security policies that have led to extended states of emergency being declared while the military has been deployed to the streets.
Police have been granted powers to raid properties without warrants and at least 5,000 people have been arrested in the crackdown. Echoing El Salvador’s popular President Nayib Bukele, Noboa has pledged to build a massive maximum-security prison for a growing inmate population.
Ecuador’s struggling economy was also high on voters’ concerns, pollsters said. GDP contracted in the first three quarters of last year, while unemployment continues to rise and 58 per cent of the workforce is employed informally.
To shore up the country’s rocky finances, Noboa obtained a $4bn loan from the IMF last year and has slashed petrol subsidies and increased value added tax to 15 per cent from 12 per cent. González said she would have renegotiated the deal.
Noboa now faces a divided National Assembly, with his National Democratic Action party holding 66 seats out of 151, while González’s Citizens Revolution has 67.
Additional reporting by Carla Valdiviezo in Quito
