Ecuador will vote for a new President and a national assembly on August 20 this year. Indications from the opinion polls just ten days before polling suggest that the Left wing candidate Luisa Gonzalez belonging to the party of former president Rafael Correa, is leading as against the seven other candidates belonging to other parties and the groups belonging to the right.
Gonzalez is the only woman member in the presidential race and she was a leading member of the dissolved national assembly Other front runners include Otto Sonnenholzner, a journalist and former vice president Lenin Moreno’s term from 2017 to 2021., Yaku Perez, an environmental activist and Fernando Villavicencio, an activist and investigative journalist famous for revealing charges against former president Correa. Unfortunately on August 9, Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated in an election rally.
Current president Guillermo Lasso was elected in 2021 presidential elections in a run off on April 11 by narrowly defeating the left wing candidate Andres Arauz who was a follower of Correa. Lasso dissolved the national assembly in May this year ordering snap elections following a constitutional crisis. Lasso nor anyone from his conservative CREO party is participating in the elections.
Former president Rafael Correa who was president for ten years from 2007 to 2017 was sentenced in 2020 for breaking company finance laws. Correa had denied the charges. He is living in Belgium in exile but he is having big influence on the activities of his supporters in Ecuador. Correa made lot of changes in favour of poor during his ten year rule. He still commands big respect from the electorate in this Latin American state.
In terms of voter concerns, insecurity is the top one, given that the country’s murder rate shot up 245 percent between 2020 and 2022. More than half of Ecuadorans polled said that fixing the country’s insecurity problem is their biggest priority. Only on Wednesday, the popular presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead at a campaign rally in Quito. He was very vocal against drug cartels and corruption. President Lasso also condemned the killing and said that organised crime was behind his killing.
The assassination has raised the tempo in the election campaign. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote—or 40 percent with a 10-point lead—a runoff will take place on October 15. In addition to the presidential election, voters will elect lawmakers for the country’s unicameral National Assembly. Winners will govern until May 2025, when Lasso’s term was meant to end.
Ecuador is located in the western corner at the top of the South American continent. Ecuador is named after the Equator, the imaginary line around the Earth that splits the country in two. Most of the country is in the Southern Hemisphere.
Ecuador is roughly the size of Colorado and is bordered by Colombia and Peru. The high Andes Mountains form the backbone of the country. Cotopaxi in the Andes is the highest active volcano in the world.
About 10 percent of the population is of European descent. Another 25 percent belong to indigenous or native cultures and the remainder are of mostly mixed ethnicity. Many of the native people are subsistence farmers and only grow enough food for their family. The leftwing candidate Gonzalez has a programme of giving rights and special assistance to the indigenous people.
Ecuador is considered one of the most diverse areas of the world. There are some 25,000 plant species, and over 1,600 known bird species. The search for oil has caused environmental devastation due to oil leaks and destruction of forests.
Ecuador has many geographical zones, including Andean peaks, tropical rainforests and – 1,000km (600 miles) off the coast – the volcanic Galapagos Islands, home to the animals and birds whose evolutionary adaptations shaped Charles Darwin’s theories.
In 2022, Ecuador was beset by rising gang violence linked to Mexican drug cartels, including shootings and car bombings. President Lasso declared a state of emergency in two regions and labelled such violent incidents “a declaration of open war”. Some analysts have suggested the country is on the edge of becoming a narco-state. . The assassination of one of the presidential candidates just before the August 20 elections is further confirmation of the terror of drug cartels in the country.
The coming presidential elections in Ecuador is being observed with keen interest by the other Latin American nations. In 2021 elections, the Left lost narrowly, since then the people’s discontent has risen against the Lasso regime. It is to be seen whether the presidential candidate Luisa Gonzalez can inspire confidence among nearly 16 million electorate in favour of her programme for a corruption free pro people government. (IPA Service)
By Satyaki Chakraborty