Businessman Daniel Noboa was elected President of Ecuador on Sunday evening, October 15, becoming, at 35, the youngest head of state in the country’s history, announced the National Electoral Council (CNE) .
The latest available results relate to 94.03% of the votes cast and give Mr. Noboa the winner with 52.3% of the votes.
His opponent, the socialist candidate Luisa Gonzalez, runner-up to ex-president Rafael Correa (2007-2017), would collect 47.7% of the votes. She admitted defeat, congratulating her rival.
82.33% participation
With “more than 90% of votes validated nationally, the CNE considers these results irreversible and Ecuador has virtually elected Daniel Noboa as president”declared the president of this body, Diana Atamaint.
In terms of number of votes, according to the latest figures available, Mr. Noboa, deputy from May 2021 to May 2023 before running in the presidential election, has more than 5 million votes compared to nearly 4.6 million for his rival.
The vote, announced in recent days as very close by the polls, took place without major incident, with a participation rate of more than 82.33%.
“Rebuild a country”
In his victory speech, Daniel Noboa promised to “restore peace” in the country. Overwhelmed by the violence of drug trafficking, Ecuador has been experiencing a political crisis since May and the dissolution of Parliament, and was placed under a state of emergency during the electoral campaign following the assassination, in August, of one of the main candidates, Fernando Villaviciencio, a former journalist with an anti-corruption speech.
“Tomorrow we will start working for this new Ecuador (…) to rebuild a country that has been seriously affected by violence, corruption and hatred”said Mr. Noboa.
The World Application
The Morning of the World
Every morning, find our selection of 20 articles not to be missed
Download the app
“From tomorrow, hope begins to work”he promised, thanking “God, my wife, my parents and all the people who were part of a new, young, improbable political project, whose objective was to bring a smile back to the country”.
“Militarization” as a political project
Smiling but initially reserved, sporting a sporty look, he promised “a firm hand” against criminal groups. For this he proposes the “militarization of ports and borders, to protect strategic routes of export and trade”or even to develop the “citizen vigilance”.
Other major security projects: create a national intelligence agency which will oversee all intelligence bodies, including the prison administration (SNAI), a “total disaster” according to him while the country’s prisons are the scene of recurring massacres between inmates of rival gangs.
The man tells himself to “center left”but this neo-liberal embodies the Ecuadorian political elite from the world of private business and close to the right.
Its 76-page program contains four sections, “social, economic, institutional and environmental”and is based on a “integral strategy” to attack “the root causes of low economic growth and high levels of crime”two related challenges according to him.
He will have very little time to keep his promises: he will govern until the beginning of 2025, the end of the mandate of the outgoing conservative president Guillermo Lasso who had chosen to call for early elections to avoid his dismissal amid accusations of corruption.
He will also have a lot to do to obtain a majority in the National Assembly, which is particularly fragmented, where he only has 13 deputies, compared to 48 for the Correist party, out of a total of 137 seats.
Son of the greatest fortune in the country
As the results were published during the evening of Sunday, concerts of horns could be heard in the capital.
The newly elected president is the son of businessman Alvaro Noboa, who controls the country’s banana trade and is considered the nation’s greatest fortune. The man had run unsuccessfully five times for president, notably against Rafael Correa in 2006.
Divorced and remarried to a nutrition influencer, Daniel Noboa is the father of two children. He studied at the best American universities and created his first event management company at the age of 18, before joining the family empire, the Noboa Corporation, as director of commercial and maritime affairs and then entering politics. .