Ruling party candidate Moreno declared victor in Ecuador election
QUITO, Ecuador — Ruling party candidate Lenin Moreno has won Ecuador’s tight presidential election, the head of the country’s National Electoral Council said Tuesday, bucking a trend of right-wing electoral victories in South America after 15 years of leftist domination.
Juan Pablo Pozo, president of the electoral council, announced the election win by the leftist Moreno in a nationwide broadcast. He said the results were “official, irreversible” with 99.65 per cent of the votes counted.
He said Moreno won slightly over 51 per cent of the vote, compared with 49 per cent for opposition challenger Guillermo Lasso, who is contesting the results over allegations of fraud.
Pozo said both political organizations can present objections through institutional and legal channels.
Moreno declared that “the people have decided democratically” and said he accepted his victory “with humility, at the same time hoping that the other candidate will accept it with dignity.”
Lasso, a conservative banker, vowed to continue fighting against the installation of an “illegitimate” government. He said on Wednesday he would present evidence backing up his demand for a recount.
“We’re not afraid of the miserable cowards who are on the wrong side of history,” he told a crowd of a few thousand supporters on Monday.
On election night, thousands of outraged Lasso supporters shouting “fraud” crashed through metal barricades to almost reach the entrance of the council’s headquarters.
Lasso so far has failed to present any evidence of vote tampering except for a single voting act of 248 ballots from a rural area whose tally he says was reversed in favour of Moreno when official results were computed.
The Organization of American States said its mission of electoral observers that visited at random 480 voting centres nationwide found no discrepancies between the tallies and the official results and encouraged Lasso to issue complaints through institutional channels.
President Rafael Correa accused Lasso supporters of trying to deny the results and provoke violence.
Many voters had said they favoured change amid ongoing corruption allegations related to bribes that Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht paid to officials in Correa’s government.