Ecuadorian elections (referendum, 21 April 2024)

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

I will say in his favor that Noboa supported a yes vote in the Yasuní referendum. González, in keeping with correísta tradition, supported no.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

How many Gonzalez-Yes (on the Yasuni referendum) were there?

[Sir John Johns]

Noboa winning is pretty surprising, though maybe it shouldn't be given the track record of polling. I know nothing about Noboa apart from his name and that he went to Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. What are his policies?

Noboa self-describes as ‘center-left’, which is the political orientation claimed by Ecuadorian politicians by default (Lucio Gutiérrez also defines himself as ‘center-left’). In the outgoing legislature, he voted more with the opposition than with the pro-government bench and expressed at the time support for the impeachment of President Lasso.

His election platform, like the one of his rivals, is mostly a collection of intentions and vague promises. It doesn’t go into specifics and dodge the question about how this will be implemented, in particular in the absence of a legislative majority and considering the shortness of the remaining presidential term (eighteen months).

Said platform is mostly focusing on economic modernization of the country and job creation with the purpose of ‘changing the productive matrix’, i.e. moving Ecuadorian economy out of its dependency on exports of a few primary commodities (an objective already targeted by the Correa presidency with very little success) by the development of technology, renewable energies and tourism sectors.

This isn’t absolutely not a surprise but Noboa’s approach is very much pro-business with measures like fiscal incentives in favor of private sector (like temporary tax exemptions for newly created businesses), a better credit access for small and medium-size enterprises and a development of vocational education to better meet the labor market demands. His government plan is also mentioning the possibility of ‘adjusting’ the age of retirement and the amount of contributions to social system, with ‘adjusting’ widely understood as ‘increasing’.

Noboa’s platform is also including a plan to build and maintain the public infrastructure (transportation, water supply and collective sanitation), the auditing of the public companies’ accounts and a better transparency in the awarding of public contracts.

Social measures defended in his plan by Noboa are including a regular increase of the minimum wage with penalties for employers not respecting the legislation in that area, the hiring of personal to improve the delivery of public heath services in rural and impoverished areas as well as a plan to fight malnutrition prioritizing pregnant women.

In the area of fight against criminality, Noboa has a mostly security-orientated approach with little consideration for the social and economic roots of criminality. His key proposals are including an improvement and a modernization of the police and justice systems and the creation of a citizen vigilance plan. Few days ago, he has gone into penal populism by adding the ridiculous promise to create a high sea floating prison where gang leaders and most dangerous criminals would be locked. Hence a first contradiction for his pretense to incarnate a new way to do politics.

Is also included in the platform, a referendum to be held during the first 90 days of his administration and including unspecified constitutional changes and measures related to institutions, security, economy and health.



As I have already mentioned, Noboa has been a supporter of the ‘yes’ in the Yasuní Referendum, a pro-environment position which may have to do with the close relations enjoyed by the Noboa family with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: the candidate for the US Democratic Party presidential nomination is indeed a close friend of the Noboa family, being the godfather of Daniel’s younger son and having invited Álvaro Noboa to his own wedding in 2014. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has also several times participated to public events in Ecuador featuring Álvaro Noba, like a conference about environment and renewable energies gave in the headquarters of one of the many companies owned by Noboa Senior (who, as far as I remember never featured prominently environment in his five presidential campaigns). For his part, Anthony Shriver Kennedy has participated in 2015 to a public event in Guayaquil with Álvaro Noboa to present a plan in favor of mentally disabled people, an event sponsored by the Noboa family’s Fundación Cruzada Nueva Humanidad (FCNH).

Nevertheless, the sincerity of the pro-environment stances of Daniel Noboa may be questioned: I somehow doubt the historical activity of the Noboa family, banana production, is particularly environment-friendly between the overuse of chemicals in the plantations and the deforestation process induced by the extension of banana (and other primary products) exploitation. Additionally, it has been noted that there is absolutely no proposal in Noboa’s governance plan dealing risk management (in a country regularly affected by earthquakes, landslides, floods, droughts and volcano eruptions) nor any measure to address the consequences of a very likely resurgence of El Niño climatic phenomenon.



More generally, everything is pointing to Daniel Noboa being nothing more than old politics practices disguised behind an effective public relations service, a stated intention to overcome the anti-Correa/pro-Correa divide which avoids clarifying for what Noboa is actually standing for, a soft environmental message and a vague commitment to modernization of economy and political life. Also important is the image of the glamour couple of millennials made up by Daniel and his wife, Lavinia Valbonesi, a fitness influencer, which has been skillfully promoted on TikTok and Instagram (where Valbonesi has respectively 117,000 and 263,000 followers).

All of this has certainly helped Daniel Noboa with millennials and zoomers, in a country where voters aged under 40 are constituting 54% of the total registered electorate (such number is also important to understand the kind of disappointing performance of Luisa González).

https://twitter.com/lahistoriaec/status/1681013701875322884

Ready to go to the cinema watching Barbie. The presidential candidate Daniel Noboa and his wife have already their pink outfits for the release of the movie starring Margot Robbie.

The personal image of Daniel Noboa has however been tarnished by his disastrous first marriage which ended up into a highly publicized divorce and accusations of psychological violence and manipulation of the Ecuadorian justice made in the press by his ex-wife.

Similarly, Daniel has exploited the image of his father, reprising notably a modernized version of the old campaign jingle used by Álvaro during his five presidential campaigns. However, this has been made possible thanks to a difference of perception of Álvaro Noboa between older and younger voters. For younger voters, Noboa senior is just an eccentric old man who has been the source of countless memes in reason of his quirky antics (bathing in the sea in the middle of the Irma hurricane; announcing his election platform while walking on a treadmill; making a funny dance at his son’s wedding).

But oldest voters remember that Álvaro started his political career in the mega-corrupt Bucaram administration, has been in 1998 the presidential candidate supported by El Loco, that his banana plantations had been at the center of several controversies (accusations of child labor, abusive working conditions, brutal crackdown on striking workers by Álvaro’s personal goons) and that the magnate had been accused of monopolistic practices and tax evasion (leading in 2013 to the seizing of the historical La Clementina plantation by the IRS). The deranged quasi-religious messianism displayed by the candidate Álvaro Noboa during his campaigns also earned him a lot of criticisms at the time, including from the local Catholic Church.



Álvaro’s tradition of mixing politics and business has remained well alive with his son as illustrated by two examples: the aforementioned Fundación Cruzada Nueva Humanidad (FCNH) and Daniel Noboa’s trip to Russia in last September.

It has been widely known that the medical brigades of the FCNH, the foundation headed by the mother of Daniel, Annabella Azín (who has been previously an assemblywoman and the running-mate of her husband, Álvaro, in both 2009 and 2013), were a powerful tool used by Álvaro Noboa to shamelessly buy votes before presidential elections. Absolutely nothing has changed as showed by this video of Daniel Noboa distributing products and clothes flocked with his ADN political alliance colors as part of a FCNH campaign:

https://twitter.com/B_Gortaire_M/status/1693546296630509598

As for the September 2022 trip to Russia of Daniel Noboa and six other legislators belonging to the Ecuador-Russia Friendship Committee (3 RC, 1 BAN, 1 ID and 1 PSC), it has been entirely financed and organized by Noboa, rising questions about whether he went to Russia in his capacity as chairman of the parliamentary committee or as the agent of the Noboa economic group for which Russia is a crucial market for banana exports.


To sum up things, the Noboa-González runoff has been framed by political observers, maybe in a too much simplistic way, as an opposition between young and old voters.

The first ones would have voted for Noboa because of his image of modern and serious businessman (in an interview, Daniel Noboa made a distinction between entrepreneur and banker, a way to also differentiate himself from Guillermo Lasso) who is different from traditional politicians or is incarnating some sort of ‘anti-politics’, who is interested in causes also interesting young voters (environment), who is active on trendy social networks, is eager to avoid personal attacks against rival and dedicated to overcoming the tedious correísta/anticorreísta divide that is dominating the political discourse since fifteen years.

For such voters, González’s appeal to nostalgia for the golden years of the Citizen Revolution has on the contrary a reduced impact as their memories of the Citizen Revolution are mostly limited to the latest years of the Correa administration (arguably not the best ones with the first austerity measures, the growing authoritarianism, the social conservative turn, the Panama Papers and Odebrecht corruption scandals, the decision of opening the Yasuní to oil extraction and the shenanigans to prevent a citizen’s initiative referendum on that matter) and the Moreno administration (with the particularly ugly infighting between Correa and his handpicked successor).

[Sir John Johns]

Thanks for your posts "Sir John Johns". Way better than anything that could be found in the Ecuadorian press.

I have not much merits: the vast majority of the stuff I post here is gathered and compiled precisely on Ecuadorian online press (mostly El Universo and Primicias for daily coverage; Plan V and GK for more-in-depth reporting) as well as from Twitter accounts from relevant people (mostly political scientists and journalists not actively engaged into the promotion of one or another candidate).

[Sir John Johns]

who would be favored in a Gonzalez v Noboa run off?

Noboa IMO, though the final margin in this round may be interesting in that regard. What unites him, Topic, and to a lesser extent Zurita is that their vote totals have all dramatically increased since the assassinations. That suggests voters went to all of them for the same reasons, albeit with different initial conclusions. One would expect consolidation in a runoff.

Also apparently there was a conspiracy theory that Gonzalez had something to do with the assassination.

Gotta say, if i had to bet a candidate was behind it, it would be Topic - shady paramilitary guy tied to mafia party who gained in the polls after his assassination?

The complaint filed by Villavicencio against the five legislators plotting to murder him isn’t an invention from Zurita, it seems:

https://twitter.com/VillaFernando_/status/1646560219290271766

Villavicencio’s tweet from 13 April 2023

I have received information from parliamentary sources about an attack with ‘hitmen’ that several legislators who have displayed open defiance of my governance are preparing against me and my family. The country knows who they are.

I’m formalizing the appropriate complaint before the Fiscalía and the Police of Ecuador, including the names of at least five assemblymen who would be behind this criminal attempt.

Another old tweet of Villavicencio has resurfaced after his assassination and it is even more disturbing:

https://twitter.com/VillaFernando_/status/1627776885152223232

Villavicencio’s tweet from 20 February 2023

President Bukele, looks like you were surprised by a criminal. Xavier Jordán is a fugitive from justice, accused of corruption in the sale of overpriced medical supplies during the pandemic. Also did business with Leandro Norero, capo of the Jalisco Nueva Generación.

Note sure what to make of this. While I understand why a guy strongly suspected of laundering drug money would do business in El Salvador presently, I don’t understand why he would posted the selfie he made with Bukele and displayed on social networks such enthusiasm for the current Salvadorean president. The audacity of the man, who has filed complaints against Villavicencio and Zurita for libel before the US courts, is just baffling, especially because this is very hard to believe he is totally innocent as he is pretending.


As for Topic, there may have been some indications the man has skeletons in the closet: during an interview he declared himself that, when considered as a pick for the job of security secretary in the Lasso administration, the president told him he must consulted with the US embassy for the appointment (apparently not a normal thing) about some reticences; afterwards, the appointment of Topic went nowhere and it was an army general who got the job. The question is whether it is the US embassy vetoed the appointment of Topic and for which reason.

[Sir John Johns]

The CNE has concluded the counting of all votes in the different elections/referendums but it also has decided to nullify all votes cast from abroad, arguing of the presumed hacking of the electronic system which prevented many electors to cast a vote.

As a consequence, a new election will be organized to designate the six assemblymen representing Ecuadorian expats, presumably on the same day than the presidential runoff, on next 15 October. Additionally, Ecuadorians abroad will have to re-vote in the election of the fifteen national assemblymen. Construye has already announced it will challenge the CNE’s decision to organize new elections for Ecuadorian expats…

The other elections and referendum will not be repeated for voters abroad as the votes of expats would not have changed the final outcome.


Final results of the presidential election are the following:

Luisa González 33.6%
Daniel Noboa 23.5%
Christian Zurita 16.4%
Jan Topic 14.7%
Otto Sonnenholzner 7.1%
Yaku Pérez 4.0%
Xavier Hervas 0.5%
Bolívar Armijos 0.4%

By geographical region it is:

Sierra
Daniel Noboa 26.1%
Luisa González 25.0%
Christian Zurita 20.5%
Jan Topic 14.7%
Otto Sonnenholzner 7.1%
Yaku Pérez 5.8%
Xavier Hervas 0.6%
Bolívar Armijos 0.3%

Costa
Luisa González 41.0%
Daniel Noboa 21.7%
Jan Topic 14.6%
Christian Zurita 12.6%
Otto Sonnenholzner 7.3%
Yaku Pérez 1.9%
Xavier Hervas 0.4%
Bolívar Armijos 0.4%

Oriente/Amazon
Luisa González 29.3%
Daniel Noboa 20.6%
Christian Zurita 20.4%
Jan Topic 14.6%
Yaku Pérez 10.0%
Otto Sonnenholzner 4.0%
Xavier Hervas 0.6%
Bolívar Armijos 0.4%

Galápagos
Christian Zurita 25.9%
Luisa González 24.4%
Daniel Noboa 19.3%
Jan Topic 18.1%
Otto Sonnenholzner 9.3%
Yaku Pérez 2.3%
Xavier Hervas 0.5%
Bolívar Armijos 0.3%

This is complete reverse of the 2006 election when Correa performed better in the Sierra and when support for the elder Noboa was concentrated in the Costa.

In the legislative elections, here the results for the national list (15 seats), awaiting the re-votes of the expats, which may slightly change the outcome:

RC 39.7%    6 seats
Construye 20.4%    3 seats
PID/MOVER 14.6%    2 seats
PSC 11.9%    2 seats
Avanza-SUMA 4.5%    1 seat
PSP 3.2%    1 seat
====
UP/PSE/DSI 2.9%
RETO 1.7%
AMIGO 1.2%

Interestingly, in spite of the high number of spoiled ballots in the legislative elections, there have been more 10,447 votes for the RC national list than for the RC presidential candidate. Back in 2021, Arauz received 450,000 votes more than the UNES national list. The RC is breaking the 50% in four provinces: Esmeraldas (51.2%), Los Ríos (51.0%), Manabí (56.5%) and Sucumbíos (50.6%).

The PSC list is only obtaining 15.0% in Guayas, its historical stronghold and, on the provincial lists, is only returning 4 assemblymen against 6 in 2021.

Former president Lucio Gutiérrez (PSP) is, kind of unexpectedly, returning as a legislator thanks to the relatively good performance of his party (obtaining 27.8% in Napo, Gutiérrez’s home turf, and receiving over 10% in three other Amazonian provinces – Morona Santiago, Pastaza and Sucumbíos – and in Bolívar, an indigenous-populated remote province in the Sierra). However, he is very much at risk of losing his seat once the expats have voted as the PSP isn’t very popular among migrants.


The provisional composition (national + provincial assemblymen) of the National Assembly is the following:

RC 48 seats
Construye 28 seats
PSC 14 seats
PID-MOVER 13 seats
Avanza-SUMA 8 seats
Pachakutik 4 seats
PSP 3 seats
UP-PSE-DSI 3 seats
RETO 2 seats
CD 1 seat
AMIGO 1 seat
provincial movements 6 seats


* The internal divisions inside Gente Buena are worsening as the election of Christian Zurita (who has announced his career in journalism is over) as the party’s national president is challenged by a group led by Edwin Ortega which has decided to instead reelect Francisco Jácome. The party is hence finding itself with two concurrent presidents, kind of similar to the current situation inside the ID.


* In term of endorsements, Luisa González has received the public support of Bolívar Armijos. That’s all.

Meanwhile, Noboa has been endorsed by Jan Topic, Andrea González Nader, the PSC and the Ortega faction of Gente Buena.

Zurita is assessing the proposals of Noboa before formally endorsing him; what is clear is that he will never support the RC. Sonnenholzner has only indicated he will not vote for the RC. Hervas has said he will not reveal for whom he will vote for (dubious he will vote for the RC which challenged his candidacy) and Pérez has remained silent on the matter but, again, it is very unlikely he would support González.

[Sir John Johns]

For what it’s worth, the first runoff poll has been released by Comunicaliza:

Daniel Noboa (ADN) 54.87%
Luisa González (RC) 45.1%

When taking into account all respondents:

Daniel Noboa (ADN) 43.1%
Luisa González (RC) 35.4%
Blank/null 8.6%
Don’t know 12.9%

So, if the Comunicaliza poll is right (big if), Noboa is the favorite but there is still enough undecided voters to enable a victory of González. According to the poll, Noboa would win in Quito and Guayaquil, both with an eleven percentage point margin.

The Comunicaliza poll also asked respondents how they consider themselves compared to Correísmo and Anticorreísmo:

Very Correísta: 15.8%
Somewhat Correísta: 11.5%
Neither Correísta nor Anticorreísta 41.5%
Somewhat Anticorreísta 5.0%
Very Anticorreísta 12.2%
Don’t know 14.0%


It seems that the bigwigs of the RC have acknowledged the first round strategy to consolidate the voto duro, by notably playing the card of polarization and victimization while denouncing an alleged ‘hate speech’ against the RC candidates and members, is not the good one to win the runoff and has even probably hurt it in the first round.

Said strategy, widely believed to have been engineered by Vinicio Alvarado, included notably the incredible idea to start the campaign on last June by flooding social networks with AI-generated pictures of lambs (borregos) as a mean to ‘claim’ an insult usually thrown at RC supporters (they are sheep/fools who blindly follow their leaser) or the release few days after the death of Villavicencio of an incredibly negative (and clearly expansive) ad featuring masked individuals who turned up to be (deep fakes of) Topic, Sonnenholzner, Hervas and Pérez which was very criticized (the people behind apparently forgot that using criminality with a total lack of tact in electoral propaganda has contributed to the meltdown of the candidacies of Viteri and Páez on last February). There were also comments judged as very insensitive made by the RC leaders in the wake of the assassination of Villavicencio and even in the days following the first round like Correa who accused successively the Lasso administration, the CIA and María Paula Romo to be behind the assassination or Aguiñaga who made a comment on TV complaining about how the RC has been ‘the most harmed’ by the death of Villavicencio.

https://twitter.com/OrlandoPerezEC/status/1673306115512098816

Tremendous impact of the RC5 campaign with the lamb pictures: what was an attempt to discredit the activists of the Citizen Revolution is now a symbol of pride and political identity with a lot of creativity and affection.

Also hurting the RC were, as I have already mentioned, the ecuadollarization controversy (which apparently led to Arauz not allowed to speak the evening of the first round and entirely disappearing from the campaign until few days ago, officially because of an injury) and the lack of notoriety of the presidential candidate designated only because of her loyalty to the boss but also the excessive self-confidence and the arrogance of the RC leaders.

I think also a big problem is that some of the key peoples in charge of the campaign are now living outside since years and have became out of touch with Ecuadorian average voters: Correa is living in Belgium and Mexico since 2017; Vinicio Alvarado, who is a fugitive from the Ecuadorian justice, has been reported to reside in Venezuela and has also worked on Gustavo Petro’s 2022 presidential campaign; similar to 2021 Arauz has been unable to vote because he neglected registering on electoral rolls in Mexico (where he was resuming his economic studies) or whatever South American country he is currently residing (he got appointed by Lula to work on the future Latin American common currency and gave interviews to Argentinian medias).

Finally, it may be possible that Aquiles Álvarez, the evangelical businessman the RC got elected the mayor of Guayaquil, has also hurt the RC candidate with decisions that severely displeased LGBT, indigenous and ecological groups: firstly, he unsuccessfully attempted on last June to relocate the Pride Parade from Guayaquil downtown (as enabled by the previous PSC administrations) to Samanes Park, in the northernmost part of the city, arguing it would cause traffic problems (a decision criticized by LGBT groups as ‘putting them back in the closet’); secondly, he ordered the dispersion of the closing event of the ‘Yes to Yasuní’ campaign in Guayaquil, a move that pissed off indigenous and environmentalists.

https://twitter.com/vilmavargasva/status/1672202190302113794

A caricature of Vilma Traca featuring Aquiles Álvarez next to Luisa González throwing the color pencils out of the ‘public space’ box.

To be fair, while Álvarez’s postures, while broadly in line with the ones of Correa, are also at odds with the ones of the RC leaders in Quito, mayor Pabel Muñoz and prefect Paola Pabón, who both participated in the Quito’s Pride Parade; Pabón has also promised when sworn again as prefect to institute a free public service to enable abortion in case of rape, a measure contrasting with the staunch anti-abortion positions of Correa and Luisa González. In any case, if the numbers provided by Primicias (there is still no official numbers released by the CNE for cantons and parishes), the RC has registered a counter-performance in Guayaquil canton, receiving only 33.6% of the votes, down from the 38.1% received in 2021 by Arauz and down from the 39.9% received by Álvarez in last February. Such mediocre performance is even more stunning, considering how the PSC machine has certainly been severely undermined by the loss of the mayoralship.


The strategists of the González campaign are now busy trying totally rebranding the image of the candidate to appeal to younger voters, with videos featuring the candidate going jogging in flashy colored clothes, playing with her dog (in contrast with her more austere and ‘serious’ first round image) and conveying an optimistic and more inclusive message with emphasis on social programs, protection of the weakest members of the society combined with the ‘All You Need Is Luisa’ (in English) slogan contrasting with the #meeeegusta hashtag of the IA-generated lambs.

Additionally, the RC is also attempting to use the lemon verbena (hierba luisa in Spanish) in its campaign to counter Noboa’s trademark Quaker oat beverage. The Noboa family is indeed the owner of the Quaker franchise in Ecuador; the Quaker company in the country has posted messages favorable to Noboa on its Instagram account and the candidate has also used old Quaker advertising slogans in his campaign. Sounds like a post-politics dystopia but I’m not sure that much voters actually care about this, outside of the social networks bubbles, and this is happening at a time when the campaign is on stand-by.

On more serious stuff, the RC may have found a weak spot of Noboa: his running-mate, Verónica Abad, a self-described ‘fusionist politician’ who is supporting libertarian ideas and has expressed her admiration for Javier Milei. A video where she was advocating the privatization of pensions, education and health sector has been found by the RC campaign which has widely promoted it with the hope it would hurt the candidacy of Noboa.

Abad’s well-known homophobic and anti-abortion stances are however a bit harder to exploit considering the own social conservative positions of the RC candidate. While Noboa has never expressed a clear opinion about abortion and was absent during the 2022 vote to support the presidential veto to a law legalizing abortion in case of rape (as requested by a Constitutional Court ruling Lasso decided to bypass).

As a way to defuse the mounting controversies about Abad, Noboa published a statement indicating the duties he would entrust the vice president if elected: protection of Ecuadorian migrants’ rights; strengthening of the social ties with Caribbean, Central American and South American countries; improvement of the relations with African countries. I.e. mostly insignificant tasks in which she doesn’t risk doing too much political damage.

But it seems the controversy about Abad has been relaunched by retrograde declarations the vice presidential candidate has made about how she seems to consider as normal that mothers are paid less than men because mothers need to dedicate time and effort to the family rather than trying to work the same amount of time than men…

[Sir John Johns]

The level of the campaign isn’t improving.

Daniel Noboa explaining here during a public event that there are people who are getting imprisoned on purpose, in order to be fed and receive free medications and even undergo free surgery to remove kidney stones.

https://twitter.com/DDavidVillamar/status/1699902733053288720

‘There are people who put themselves in jail on purpose, to receive free food and medicine.’

No comments needed.

The brand new representative of ‘new politics’ has the same flaws and the same ignorance than the old politicians. Clear that he doesn’t understand the society he intends to govern.

Noboa’s assertions are contradicted by countless reports and testimonies about how inmates have a very limited access to health care and how their relatives have to pay to provide them an adequate food. Plus you have to be totally nuts to think the Ecuadorian prisons would be a place people wants to go on purpose.

In another meeting, he also specified that his planned food program for pregnant women will be delivered under the form of food stamps and not as a cash payment in order to ‘not encourage a larger number of pregnancies, for fun’.

Incredibly insensitive and classist comments.

But Luisa González shot herself in the foot with her own kind of politically devastating moronic comment:

https://twitter.com/radiocentroec/status/1699838283705119198

Attention: Better Venezuela than Ecuador.

According to the Correísta presidential candidate Luisa González, the Venezuelans ‘are running back to their country’ because of the level of insecurity in Ecuador, and in Venezuela, ‘there are better living conditions.

In the face of the mounting controversy, González has clarified than by ‘better living conditions’ she was referring to ‘physical survival’ and accused the anchor who asked her about Venezuela to have had ‘malicious intents’. While Venezuelans are now longer heading towards Ecuador because of the dire economic and security situation there, no figures are backing the claim that Venezuelans are leaving Ecuador to go back to their country. According to official figures from last year, the homicide rate in Venezuela was higher than the one in Ecuador, even if the situation has since dramatically deteriorated since in the latter country. Also, Ecuador’s homicide rate is kind of skewed by the prisons massacres while Venezuela is facing its own specific insecurity problems with the control of vast parts of the country by armed groups, including Colombian guerrillas.

https://twitter.com/vilmavargasva/status/1700254863626756212

While they:

Abad: ‘We will privatize health and education’
Noboa: ‘People are putting themselves in prison on purpose’
‘They get pregnant to ask for money’

Arauz: ‘Let’s do an ecuadollarization’
González: ‘Venezuela has better living conditions than Ecuador’.

The country:

Indeed, the body of a PSC councilor of Durán canton has been found after having been previously abducted by gangsters, adding a new name to the list of Ecuadorian politicians targeted by criminals.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/vilmavargasva/status/1700254863626756212

While they:

Abad: ‘We will privatize health and education’
Noboa: ‘People are putting themselves in prison on purpose’
‘They get pregnant to ask for money’

Arauz: ‘Let’s do an ecuadollarization’
González: ‘Venezuela has better living conditions than Ecuador’.

The country:

Indeed, the body of a PSC councilor of Durán canton has been found after having been previously abducted by gangsters, adding a new name to the list of Ecuadorian politicians targeted by criminals.

Is there any significance, which specific characters' clothes the candidates are drawn with in this political cartoon?

[Sir John Johns]

The cartoon is a parody of the Doraemon anime (which appears to be quite popular in Ecuador while this one has never been a thing in my country, where there have still been hundreds of anime being aired since the late 1970s) with the four candidates being depicted as the four main kid characters of the anime:

- Daniel Noboa as Nobita Nobi, because of the similar sounding name (Noboa is often referred to as ‘Nobita’ by his critics on social networks) and juvenile face

- Verónica Abad as Suneo Honekawa, a boy in the anime who is defined by the Doraemon fandom wiki as ‘a spoiled rich kid who likes to show off his cool stuff to his friends and make them jealous’, so not a bad comparison

- Andrés Arauz as Takeshi Goda, the overweight bully to which Arauz is physically very muck like; possibly also a jab at Correa who is constantly acting a bully.

- Luisa González as Shizuka Minamoto, the only girl of the bunch.

The titular character of Doraemon, a robot cat from the future, is representing Ecuador and is crying next to the body of an alter ego. In the anime, he is sent to the past to improve the situation of Nobita and alter the future in a positive way; it can be assumed that in this cartoon, he has failed as the four aforementioned politicians will make the future worse, judging by their outrageous declarations. Can additionally be read as: the four politicians are totally out of touch with reality, playing with the gadgets of Doraemon (here the take-copter) and making dumb comments while, in real life, Ecuadorians are suffering from food insecurity, poverty and criminality.

[Sir John Johns]

The Workers’ Unitary Front (FUT), the main trade union federation of the country will not endorse a candidate in the runoff:

https://twitter.com/josevillavicenf/status/1701298615388348485

In the statement, the FUT is indicating that ‘none of the two bourgeois alternatives participating in the presidential runoff is representing the interests and aspirations of the workers and peoples of Ecuador’.

The FUT is citing the exploitation of workers and the denial of labor rights and right to unionize in the Noboa family’s companies (banana plantations), the alleged tax evasion of the Noboas as well as the economic platform of the ADN candidate (labor market flexibility, privatizations and other neoliberal policies) as reasons to not support Daniel Noboa.

Meanwhile, the FUT is mentioning the record of the Correa administration (abolition of the state financial contribution to the Social Security Institute; corruption; the passage of a constitutional amendment preventing unionization for newly hired public servants; the ban of the UNE teachers’ union; the division of the labor movement through the creation of government-sponsored dissident unions) as a motive to not support Luisa González, considering the RC candidate has showed no intention to distance herself from the former president, quite the contrary.



For its part, the CONAIE has decided after an extended council to also not endorse a candidate in the runoff, while being less unequivocal than the FUT. It has indeed made public 19 demands and submitted them to the two candidates with the potential of being included in their government plans. Another extended council will be summoned shortly before the runoff to decide whether the CONAIE reconsider its decision to not endorsing any candidate.

https://twitter.com/CONAIE_Ecuador/status/1700270687624315165

Noboa has already rejected the proposals of the CONAIE, calling them ‘unacceptable’, indicating he will not change his government plan and labeling Leonidas Iza as a ‘correísta’, an accusation shortly thereafter dismissed by the CONAIE president.

Meanwhile, González has claimed that ‘the proposals of the CONAIE coincide fully with what is saying the Constitution of the Republic and what is saying our government plan’. This may be true for most of the economic stuff and the commission to investigate human rights violations during the 2019 and 2022 protest movements but not for the rest.

The points 2 (immediate compliance with the results of the consultas on Yasuní and Chocó Andino) and 3 (immediate moratorium and audit of all mining concessions) is contrary to the extractive economic model continued and deepened under Correa.

The points 7 (‘recovery and strengthening of the public, community and intercultural education system’) and 10 (institutionalization of the Amawtay Wasi Intercultural University of Indigenous Nations and Peoples – UIAW) are partly inconsistent with Correa’s past education policies driven by a hyper-centralist, statist and homogenizing vision with little regard for cultural differences, local realities and the opinion of the indigenous communities. This has led to a total control of the central state over the intercultural bilingual education system, the closure of many small schools in rural and indigenous communities in favor of larger millennium schools supposed to cover a wider area (the consequences have been a longer distance to go to school for children in rural and indigenous communities while the construction of many millennium schools has been plagued by corruption, overprices and issues of faults meaning that many are oversized, aren’t aging very well or are even been abandoned) and the lose of accreditation followed by the closure in 2013 of the UIAW.

Point 11 (policies and legal reforms for guaranteeing communal ownership, titling of ancestral territories, and a ‘plurinational, communal and productive agrarian reform to put limits on the accumulation of land ownership into a few hands’) is also not in line with the past policies of Correa, who has favored export-oriented agro-business over small farmers and renounced to implement an agrarian reform.

Finally, point 17 (‘audit of the public debt incurred with multilateral organizations, private lenders and foreign powers’ and ‘recover money and assets from corruption and organized crime’) is also problematic as the RC is also demanding an audit of the public debt, but only for the one incurred under the Moreno and Lasso administrations, ignoring the debt contracted under Correa, in particular the controversial Chinese loans plagued by opacity and allegations of corruption (Cai Runguo, a former ambassador of China to Ecuador has been indicted in the Sinohydro case, a corruption case related to the construction of the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant and whose principal accused is Lenín Moreno; Cai has been charged as the legal representative of Sinohydro in Ecuador, a job he hold just after his stint as ambassador).


In an interview, Iza, while acknowledging that ‘many policies of correísmo have benefited the people’, indicated that ‘other policies were extremely incompatible with the struggle of the indigenous movement’ and complained about the fact that ‘there never has been any self-criticism about the persecution endured by the indigenous movement during the Correa administration’ in the RC. He also criticized several indigenous politicians like Yaku Pérez, Salvador Quishpe and Lourdes Tibán (the latter quite openly campaigning for Noboa) while stating that Noboa ‘doesn’t understand the country and doesn’t understand the indigenous peoples, even less the plurinationality’.

So, it is doubtful the CONAIE will change its decision about an already very unlikely endorsement of Noboa. For González, it also doesn't like very likely considering it would necessitate self-criticism from Correísmo and a U-turn on important policies like support for mega-mining and export-oriented agro-business. One must also take into account that Iza is already preparing the 2025 presidential election, meaning that has he any interest in a victory of González?

[Sir John Johns]

In spite of Verónica Abad being out of the country (she’s currently campaigning in the United States among the sizable Ecuadorian diaspora, in line with the duties Noboa would entrust her in case of victory), the ADN candidate for the vice-presidency is again embroiled into a controversy after the release on the social networks of an interview she gave (at an unspecified date) in which, true to her hardcore libertarian views, she claims the state is promoting divorce among women with its welfare programs.

https://twitter.com/lahistoriaec/status/1705010780381581392

The state promotes, nudges, basically, the woman to decide divorce. Yes? Because it constantly getting into our heads, through its programs, that it is very easy. No? That the woman is precisely going to have the benefit, that the woman is going to have the voucher, is going to have the [basic] basket, that the women heads of the household, practically, it will be very easy; thus, so to speak, throw away the husband because he is of no use, but I, the State, am going to be your husband and am going to be the father of your children, because your children are also going to have free health, free education.

In the same interview, she also indicates that only three natural rights are existing – life, freedom and property – and that the rest, like, as mentionned by Abad herself, right to education, right to health, right to a retirement, right to work and ‘a lot of rights we have today’ aren’t actually rights.

The video has been released just as Noboa has promised the creation of a $60 voucher for pregnant women and an increase in minimum retirement pensions.

The RC is, of course, sharing en masse the video and is trying to further exploit the out of touch declarations of Abad by endorsing the proposal made by several outlets to organize a vice-presidential debate and by already announcing that Arauz will participate in such event.

[Peeperkorn]

The cartoon is a parody of the Doraemon anime (which appears to be quite popular in Ecuador while this one has never been a thing in my country, where there have still been hundreds of anime being aired since the late 1970s) with the four candidates being depicted as the four main kid characters of the anime:

This is really interesting, I didn't even know that Doraemon had been dubbed to Spanish.

[kaoras]

The cartoon is a parody of the Doraemon anime (which appears to be quite popular in Ecuador while this one has never been a thing in my country, where there have still been hundreds of anime being aired since the late 1970s) with the four candidates being depicted as the four main kid characters of the anime:

This is really interesting, I didn't even know that Doraemon had been dubbed to Spanish.

Lol, everyone and their mother (quite literally) has seen it. Out of curiosity, how long have you been in the US?

[Peeperkorn]

The cartoon is a parody of the Doraemon anime (which appears to be quite popular in Ecuador while this one has never been a thing in my country, where there have still been hundreds of anime being aired since the late 1970s) with the four candidates being depicted as the four main kid characters of the anime:

This is really interesting, I didn't even know that Doraemon had been dubbed to Spanish.

Lol, everyone and their mother (quite literally) has seen it. Out of curiosity, how long have you been in the US?

Five years. As far as I know we never had Doraemon on Uruguayan TV or the Latin American international cable channels that we had. Maybe it's a Pacific coast countries thing?

[kaoras]

The cartoon is a parody of the Doraemon anime (which appears to be quite popular in Ecuador while this one has never been a thing in my country, where there have still been hundreds of anime being aired since the late 1970s) with the four candidates being depicted as the four main kid characters of the anime:

This is really interesting, I didn't even know that Doraemon had been dubbed to Spanish.

Lol, everyone and their mother (quite literally) has seen it. Out of curiosity, how long have you been in the US?

Five years. As far as I know we never had Doraemon on Uruguayan TV or the Latin American international cable channels that we had. Maybe it's a Pacific coast countries thing?

Wiki says that the 1979 series was aired in Argentinian tv at least.

[Sir John Johns]

Eloy Alfaro must roll in his grave. Ten days ago, when attending a religious service in an evangelical church in Guamaní, a popular parish in southern Quito, Luisa González (herself an evangelical) took the opportunity to lengthily discussed her faith. She then described herself as a ‘daughter of the Lord’, said she would ‘rather lose than not speaking about God’ and lamented about Ecuador having ‘removed God from their hearts’. At the end of González’s speech, a self-described prophet emotionally revealed that God had told him a woman will win the election and entrusted González with a replica of the presidential sash.

https://twitter.com/BNPeriodismo/status/1705983576448106954

Such politico-religious show contradicted previous statements made by González claiming that her personal beliefs would not interfere with her guidance of the state and is a bit contrary to the country’s constitution which indicates that Ecuador is a secular state (not that the successive presidents including the incumbent one have bothered respecting such provision all the time).

In the same vein, González also met few days ago with representatives of the Council of Evangelical Indigenous Peoples and Organizations of Ecuador (FEINE, the acronym is actually the one of its forerunner, the Ecuadorian Federation of Indigenous Evangelicals), the main organization of the evangelical indigenous communities and one of the big three indigenous confederations with the CONAIE and the FENOCIN. During the meeting, González also prayed with the evangelical indigenous leaders. The FEINE is advocating some very social conservative positions (like a prohibition of sale and consumption of alcohol among indigenous communities) while also defending fairly left-wing stances in economic area; the evangelical indigenous confederation notably participated actively in the 2019 and 2022 indigenous paros. With such meeting, the FEINE is renewing its alliance with the RC, already noticeable during the 2021 election when it endorsed Arauz in the runoff. In fact, the former president of the FEINE between 2018 and 2022, Eustaquio Tuala (an indigenous evangelical pastor from Tungurahua) had been elected last month an assemblyman as a candidate on the RC national list.

Unlikely such stuff will significantly hurt González even if this will not please neither the feminists, neither some young voters nor the CONAIE (whose relations with the FEINE are kind of complicated; one of the 16 demands of the CONAIE’s 1990 political platform was the expulsion of the US-funded evangelical groups, in first place the Summer Institute of Linguistics, seen as a tool of the yanqui imperialism). Noboa isn’t the best-placed to exploit the ties of González with evangelicalism, his father having himself previously tried to attract the evangelical vote and having been accustomed to make truly deranged messianic proclamations (like his absolutely WTF grandiloquent message to ‘save the world’ he had the idea to deliver in both English and French).


Meanwhile, Guillermo Lasso is doing his best to make his last weeks in office the most disgraceful possible. On an official visit in the United States during which he personally decorated Bill Clinton and Chris Dodd and met with the head of the Latin American branch of the McDonald’s company to discuss investments in Ecuador, he made declarations understandably not much well-received in Ecuador about how the feeling of absolute insecurity in Ecuador ‘is not such’ because ‘90% of the violence is between gangs and organized criminal groups’, forgetting the collateral victims of shootings and bomb attacks and the victims of racketeering and kidnapping. While also announcing he will leave his successor a letter with recommendations on three topics: security, fight against chronic malnutrition and defense of the dollarization through proper economic management (i.e. three topics on which his track record is fairly disastrous).

Shortly before that, during a right-wing forum in Buenos Aires, he delivered in a pre-recorded intervention a speech suspiciously similar to the one of the previous speaker, Mariano Rajoy.

As it was not enough, one of the policemen previously in charge of the León de Troya case (about presumed ties between the Albanian mafia and the brother-in-law of Lasso) released a video in which he claims the government, the police high command and the Fiscalía are doing nothing to protect him, his relatives as well as one of his hierarchical superior from death threats received from criminal groups; the policeman is additionally claiming threats were made on last April against the lives of Fernando Villavicencio and Andersson Boscán and that the government got him removed from the investigation to send him in a particularly dangerous area of Esmeraldas province as a way to cover up the case.

Finally, like Chile’s Piñera administration, the Lasso administration has proven unable to properly conduct the census of the country’s population: controversy has emerged even before the release of the official numbers of the 2022 census whose surprising findings include a total population of 16.9 million instead of the projected 18.1 million inhabitants (a difference explained by the director of the National Institute for Statistics and Censuses, INEC, by declining birth rate, increased immigration – Ecuadorians have became the second largest national group among migrants trying to cross the Darién Gap with 34.357 Ecuadorian migrants recorded during the first seven months of 2023, slightly ahead of Haitians – 34.082 – but far behind Venezuelans – 136.650 – and overmortality due to the pandemic) and a suspicious large decline in self-identification as Afro-Ecuadorian, from 7.2% in 2010 to 4.8% in 2022. A group of former directors of the INEC, experts and activists have published a statement demanding to not use the results of the census until they have been audited by international and independent authorities. The figures of the census are notably use to allocate the number of legislators each province deserve and the amount of financial resources allocated to local authorities by the central state. Incidentally, the first consequence of the census is that the homicide rate is automatically increasing, making Ecuador the third most violent country in Latin America.

[Sir John Johns]

Presidential debate will take place this evening.

So far every poll but one has shown Noboa leading González, often by a healthy margin (a ten-point lead in the latest Comunicaliza and Estrategas Infinity polls, for example). As such the debate is widely considered as the latest opportunity for González to boost a campaign which, by most accounts, has struggled to take off and to finally take the advantage over Noboa.

Nonetheless, there is some doubts about whether the debate could really reverse the course of the campaign and enable González to capture enough of the assumed quite large undecided voters (estimated at 14% in the latest Comunicaliza; at 19% in the latest Negocios & Estrategias) or even Noboa’s reluctant/soft voters for the simple reason that Correísmo is already the most strongly defined and most polarizing option and the political option about which the largest amount of voters have a strong opinion about (be it a positive or a negative opinion). Additionally, González remains perceived as the candidate of Correa and not as her own candidate while having fewer latitude than Noboa to adapt her campaign to voters’ mood and aspirations.

Some are already pronouncing the candidacy of González as dead and are pointing out to the RC candidate’s last publicity stunt (a deep-fake video featuring Luisa González as ‘Wonder Woman’ fighting drug traffickers) as a ‘proof’ of the desperation among the campaign team of the candidate.

Yet, González may have a few hopes, beginning with the hardly implausible possibility that polls are once again wrong. There are also signs that the candidacy of Noboa may be weaker than perceived, as exemplified by the various controversies surrounding his running-mate or the controversy about the alleged huge arrears owed by the Noboa Group to the tax services, a controversy which resurfaced when Daniel Noboa was asked by a student during a public forum held in a university about that topic and failed to deliver a totally convincing response (denying any wrongdoing and renewing his pledge to fight tax evasion if elected president) – no doubt that the tax evasion practices, the abuses of labor rights and the monopolistic practices of the Noboa Group will be used against the ADN candidate during the debate.

Finally, the RC candidate may use the nationalist card after the US secretary of state has announced a $5 million reward for any information leading to the arrest of the persons behind the assassination of Fernando Villavicencio and after the Ecuadorian government has signed an agreement enabling the United States Coast Guard to directly work with the Ecuadorian military (Shiprider Program) to fight drug trafficking, human trafficking and illegal fishing (there have been strong suspicions about the Chinese fishing fleet poaching off the Galapagos Islands, within Ecuadorian sovereign waters) before the possible  disclosure of other agreements about the sending of US ground forces in Ecuador to fight drug cartels if the Washington Examiner is to be trusted. The signature of the agreement (agreements?) happened just after President Lasso attended a briefing of the Dan Crenshaw-chaired ‘Congressional Task Force to Combat the Mexican Drug Cartels’ (which hasn’t apparently been briefed about the alleged ties of Lasso’s brother-in-law with Albanian mafia but whatever).

The announcement by Anthony Blinken of the reward has been strongly denounced by Correa himself who has warned about an alleged upcoming attempt to dirt the RC campaign as well as the Petro administration and that just few days after the release of a statement from the RC announcing that RC reelected assemblyman Roberto Cuero and RC former assemblyman Ronny Aleaga were already preparing a judicial response in front of the supposed upcoming release of chat conversations involving both men into some dirty activities (possibly the assassination of Villavicencio itself) as both men are pretending said chat conversations have been fabricated in order to defame the RC just before the runoff. I already mentioned Aleaga, a former Latin King member who has been photographed in a Miami villa with two men suspected of laundering money from corruption and/or drug trafficking; for his part Cuero had previously served as a governor of Guayas in the Correa administration between 2009 and 2012 until being forced to resign over allegations he covered up a corruption and extortion network inside the provincial police system and lied about his assets, having in particular omitted to declare the ownership of a house with swimming pool in the seaside resort of Playas.

So, maybe possible revelations about Villavicencio’s death to happen in the following days as the investigation about the case must concluded on 10 October. Reports about the investigators being interested by a phone call made from a prison cell in Latacunga and a phone message sent since the Chicago area.

Experts consulted by El Universo are stating that the US government reward is motivated by Villavicencio’s journalistic investigation on international corruption networks as well as a possible collaboration of the assassinated journalist-turn-politician with the FBI. Because the money coming from drug destined for the US market is very certainly laundered in the United States, following the example of laundering of bribery practiced by various Ecuadorian high officials like Carlos Pólit – the longtime comptroller-general (2008-17) who fled to Florida just before the inauguration of Moreno as he was facing allegations of corruption in Ecuador (leading to his subsequent removal in absentia by the Ecuadorian assemblymen voted by morenista and correísta legislators alike) and will faced starting from next 23 October a trial in Miami over presumed participation in a money laundering scheme which enabled him to purchase several properties in the main city of Florida – or Nilsen Arias – the powerful director for international trade in the Petroecuador oil company who, after having moved to Portugal just after the inauguration of Moreno relocated in New York where he had been arrested last year and where he is facing a trial over his participation into a kickback scheme inside Petroecuador related to the pre-sales of oil to China’s Petrochina and Unipec and Thailand’s PTT International Trading and his laundering of the corruption money in the United States. Will not be surprised to learn there is also some very shady stuff connected with that trusts Lasso had in South Dakota or that the villa of that shady businessman who parties with Aleaga and takes selfies with Bukele has been financed thanks to criminal activities.

[Sir John Johns]

The debate of last Sunday is widely panned as mediocre, repetitive, dull and lacking of interest and substance: ‘the debate between Luisa González and Daniel Noboa could have been an e-mail’; ‘the debate between Noboa and González was not even sufficient for memes’; ‘Televised electoral debates: little show and little substance’.

Daniel Noboa is widely seen as the main loser of the debate as he totally failed to renew his first round debate performance, delivering here monotone, scripted and repetitive interventions and not really trying to reach undecided voters nor highlighting the social and environmental aspects of his platform. The ADN candidate attacked at various occasions, and on topics barely related to the issue, the classification table introduced by the Correa government to determine the prosecution of drug users, trying to put the rise of drug trafficking and criminality on that peculiar measure, leading González to express her concern about Noboa’s apparent 'fixation' with drugs.

Noboa also committed a major mistake when González asked him about the former position of Bernardo Manzano (an agriculture minister under Lasso forced to resign due his connections with Rubén Cherrez and Danilo Carrera and his possible involvement in the León de Troya case) as a manager in the Noboa Group, not subtly hinting at the use by drug cartels of banana shipment towards Europe as a way to export cocaine outside of Ecuador. Indeed, Noboa responded with a whataboutery, mentioning accusations of ties with cartels made against José Serrano, an interior minister under Correa, hence undermining his pretenses to incarnate a new way of doing politics, above personal attacks and above the pro/anti-Correa cleavage.

By contrast, the performance of González, while still pretty mediocre, looked like by default as better than the one of Noboa and as a noticeable improvement over her own disastrous performance during the first round debate. Unlike in last August, the RC candidate appeared as more prepared, less robotic, less focused on the record of the Correa administration and stayed largely away from the usual victimhood posture.

Unlike what I wrongly thought, she didn’t engaged into nationalist rhetoric. When asked by Noboa about the reward issued by the US government for any information leading to the conviction of the assassins of Villavicencio, she perfunctorily expressed her support for it before rapidly moving away from that topic. When Noboa attacked her about the recent participation of Correa to a meeting of the Puebla Group during which was widely discussed the de-dollarization topic, González aptly answered that the Puebla Group meeting was about the de-dollarization of global trade system and not the abandonment of dollar by Ecuador and reminded Noboa about his trip in Russia as head of the economic development commission to seek an alternative payment option outside of dollar system, asking him if that was making him an opponent to dollar (relatedly, Noboa pretended then his family never exported a single box of bananas to Russia, which is certainly a blatant lie).

In her short conclusion of the debate, González included a complaint about the absence of discussion about women’s problems and delivered a message of inclusion which, while certainly hypocritical, made her conclusion much more inspirational than the one of Noboa, a totally vapid message he appears not having even anticipated.

So in short, if the debate had any impact, it would be on a tightening of the race.

[Edu]

Wiki says that the 1979 series was aired in Argentinian tv at least.

lmao, el GATO CÓSMICO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g_YYmZ8Cuc

[Peeperkorn]

Wiki says that the 1979 series was aired in Argentinian tv at least.

lmao, el GATO CÓSMICO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g_YYmZ8Cuc

lol @ the sign language interpreter.

[Peeperkorn]

The debate of last Sunday is widely panned as mediocre, repetitive, dull and lacking of interest and substance: ‘the debate between Luisa González and Daniel Noboa could have been an e-mail’; ‘the debate between Noboa and González was not even sufficient for memes’; ‘Televised electoral debates: little show and little substance’.

Daniel Noboa is widely seen as the main loser of the debate as he totally failed to renew his first round debate performance, delivering here monotone, scripted and repetitive interventions and not really trying to reach undecided voters nor highlighting the social and environmental aspects of his platform. The ADN candidate attacked at various occasions, and on topics barely related to the issue, the classification table introduced by the Correa government to determine the prosecution of drug users, trying to put the rise of drug trafficking and criminality on that peculiar measure, leading González to express her concern about Noboa’s apparent 'fixation' with drugs.

Noboa also committed a major mistake when González asked him about the former position of Bernardo Manzano (an agriculture minister under Lasso forced to resign due his connections with Rubén Cherrez and Danilo Carrera and his possible involvement in the León de Troya case) as a manager in the Noboa Group, not subtly hinting at the use by drug cartels of banana shipment towards Europe as a way to export cocaine outside of Ecuador. Indeed, Noboa responded with a whataboutery, mentioning accusations of ties with cartels made against José Serrano, an interior minister under Correa, hence undermining his pretenses to incarnate a new way of doing politics, above personal attacks and above the pro/anti-Correa cleavage.

By contrast, the performance of González, while still pretty mediocre, looked like by default as better than the one of Noboa and as a noticeable improvement over her own disastrous performance during the first round debate. Unlike in last August, the RC candidate appeared as more prepared, less robotic, less focused on the record of the Correa administration and stayed largely away from the usual victimhood posture.

Unlike what I wrongly thought, she didn’t engaged into nationalist rhetoric. When asked by Noboa about the reward issued by the US government for any information leading to the conviction of the assassins of Villavicencio, she perfunctorily expressed her support for it before rapidly moving away from that topic. When Noboa attacked her about the recent participation of Correa to a meeting of the Puebla Group during which was widely discussed the de-dollarization topic, González aptly answered that the Puebla Group meeting was about the de-dollarization of global trade system and not the abandonment of dollar by Ecuador and reminded Noboa about his trip in Russia as head of the economic development commission to seek an alternative payment option outside of dollar system, asking him if that was making him an opponent to dollar (relatedly, Noboa pretended then his family never exported a single box of bananas to Russia, which is certainly a blatant lie).

In her short conclusion of the debate, González included a complaint about the absence of discussion about women’s problems and delivered a message of inclusion which, while certainly hypocritical, made her conclusion much more inspirational than the one of Noboa, a totally vapid message he appears not having even anticipated.

So in short, if the debate had any impact, it would be on a tightening of the race.

I want Noboa to win, but apparently he's going to be just another mediocre president.

[Sir John Johns]

This is what has happened during the last few days:

* The six Colombian suspects in the Villavicencio assassination case have all been murdered in the Guayaquil prison they were detained. So was a seventh suspect, killed few afterwards in a prison of Quito. The six Colombian nationals should have been moved to another prison due to threats against their security but the order of transfer was never executed. As a consequence, both the head of the police and the head of the national prison administration have been removed but not enough to appease the anger at the Lasso administration accused, at best of incompetence, at worst of being accomplice of the assassination of Villavicencio.

* A former mayor of Durán, Mariana Mendieta (ex-PSC), has been kidnapped in the city, in broad daylight. Her whereabouts are unknown for the moment. The next day, the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights ordered the Ecuadorian government to implement protective measures to ensure the safety of the current mayor of Durán, Luis Chonillo, who has survived an assassination attempt on last May and must now assume his duties while in hiding.

* Unplanned electricity outages happened in several parts of the country, just after the government had announced the introduction of electricity rationing (a first since 2009) – a decision however rapidly reversed – and ensured there will be no blackout.

The outages were the consequences of maintenance works on the Colombian electric grid as Ecuador needs to import electricity to meet electricity needs in that period of the year, the domestic power generation being unable to ensure an energy sovereignty for a variety of reasons including an unscheduled growth of the domestic demand in the latest years, problems with the China-built hydro-electric stations plagued by overcost and construction defects, a premature drought severely impacting hydroelectric power plants, lack of maintenance of the thermal power stations, delays in the construction of new electric plants, lack of anticipation from the Moreno and Lasso administration and finally, of course, corruption.

* Even if there is no sitting parliament at the moment and even if Lasso is on his way out, the tedious pugna de poderes is continuing unabated. The Constitutional Court has removed Alembert Vera (a former personal lawyer of Rafael Correa) from both the presidency and his seat in the CPCCS over Vera’s attempts to challenge the selection of the Constitutional Court judges in 2019 and to nullify the 2019 designation of the current attorney-general on the grounds she plagiarized her university thesis (with the quite openly stated goal of declaring invalid all the prosecutions against Correa), judging such moves are contrary to a previous ruling of the court rendering the decisions of the 2018-19 transition CPCCS unassailable.

As a consequence, Vera’s seat has been attributed to the next most-voted candidate on the men’s list in the February 2023 elections, an anti-Correísta lawyer, while the presidency of the institution is going to the outgoing vice-president, a former public administrator close to the PSC. The internal balance inside the CPCCS has hence been changed with the already collapsing RC-PSC alliance no longer having a working majority in it. Vera is the fourth president of the CPCCS to be removed since 2019.

Meanwhile, the selection process of the next comptroller-general, organized under the supervision of the CPCCS, is pending since over two years, the consequence of political infighting and judicial interference. A judge of Samborondón has just ordered the suspension of the process, the fourth time such thing since the beginning of the process in July 2021.

* For its part, the Judicature Council is in total chaos.

Back in August, the new president of that body, Wilman Terán, already controversial for acting like your average politician on the campaign trail (many publicity stunt, TikTok videos and loud proclamations), was widely criticized for a juridic innovation of his own: the Judicature Council then voted the removal of Walter Macías, a judge in the National Court of Justice, with only two (Terán and another member, Xavier Muñoz) out of five members of the Judicature Council voting in favor, the rest abstaining or being absent. Legally speaking, this doesn’t constitute a legit majority, meaning the procedure is already blatantly irregular but, aggravating factors, Muñoz voted via a public Zoom channel (illegal as the vote must not be done through a publicly accessible channel) while in Miami (also illegal to vote from abroad) and while seemingly heavily intoxicated. Detail which has its importance: Macías was in charge of a case of suspected influence peddling involving two other members of the Judicature Council (Juan José Morillo and Maribel Barreno), both suspected of having intervened in 2022 on behalf of President Lasso to prevent the removal of the president of the National Assembly, Guadalupe Llori.

Macías, who has been restored in his duties after a judicial decision, has ordered last month a pre-trial detention for Morillo and Barreno, an unappealable decision meaning both are suspended from the Judicature Council; there is no replacement for Morillo because his alternate had resigned on last January and the process to select new alternate members is still pending. Meanwhile, Terán and Muñoz (as well as Barreno who is apparently on the loose) are also sued before the National Court of Justice by the Attorney-General for obstruction of justice in relation with the irregular removal of Macías, meaning they could also be gone in the next weeks. Finally, Muñoz is also investigated by the Attorney-General’s Office over possible money laundering and has announced his visa has been revoked by the US State Department, a move he blamed on the ‘persecution’ from the attorney-general but which could means he is involved in some dirty business and/or is associated with shady individuals.

The influence peddling case against Morillo and Barreno is backed by audios of secretly recorded conversations which took place on 2 June 2022 and whose transcripts were made public by the attorney-general in last June. If true, said conversations shed a crude light on how things are working in the Ecuadorian justice system. In addition of discussing pressures from President Lasso to prevent the removal of Llori, the magistrates attending the recorded meeting (two judges from the Pichincha jurisdiction in addition to the two mentioned members of the Judicature Council) were also talking about the attempted negotiations between the head of the National Court of Justice (who wanted the job of attorney-general) and Rafael Correa, about a deal between Lasso and Correa to get Jorge Glas out of prison, about the PSC successfully lobbying for the withdrawing of names for the Judicature Council, about how Muñoz was maneuvering to convince legislators to vote with the UNES bench and about how he was conspiring to head the Judicature Council and how the then-president of said Judicature Council wasn’t worried because he had obtained the support of the Pachakutik assemblymen.

[Sadader]

it's looking a lot closer now right? I think González could take this

[Oryxslayer]

it's looking a lot closer now right? I think González could take this

The debate (or something else recently? but I suspect the debate) did seemingly cause a 3-5 point swing towards RC, which means Gonzales does now have a lead in a poll that previously had Noboa ahead, and a slightly wider lead in the only one that had her leading previously. With the election in under a week, that would seemingly suggest a closer result than the first round implied.