Ecuador presidential election will show if continent’s pink tide has truly turned
ECUADOR - Ten years ago, as Latin America’s “pink tide” reached its high-water mark, leftwing leaders such as Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa were in power across the continent. But death and election defeat have since culled their numbers and trimmed their power. Cuba is on a path of moderate reform after the death of Castro. Venezuela was lurching from one crisis to another even before Chávez succumbed to cancer in 2013. Morales’s days as president of Bolivia are also numbered after he failed in an attempt last year to change the constitution to allow him to run for re-election.
This Sunday, Ecuador will also make a change, with the first presidential election in more than a decade not to be contested by Correa, who is stepping aside after winning three consecutive terms. Whether the country now follows the continental trend towards centre-right government or remains a bastion for the left is being contested in an unusually dirty campaign. The favorite is Lenín Moreno, a former vice-president under Correa who is standing for the ruling Alianza País coalition, but very different in style and politics from the outgoing president. As his first name suggests, Moreno is from a leftwing family, but he has a reputation for inclusiveness openness and humor that earned him approval ratings above 90% when he quit the vice-presidency in 2013 to take up a United Nations post as special envoy on disability. If he wins, he would be the first paraplegic head of state, having used a wheelchair since he was shot in a robbery. “This is a very important election. There have been defeats of the left in Latin America. There is no doubt about that,” the foreign minister, Guillaume Long, said. “We play by the rules of democracy so we always knew something could happen. But I don’t think it will happen here on 19 February.”
In the final weeks of the campaign, the biggest criticism is of corruption, particularly relating to Vice-President Jorge Glas – a Correa loyalist who is accused of organising bribes and kickbacks through the state-run oil company Petroecuador. As Glas is Moreno’s running mate, many Ecuadorians fear he will continue the shadier side of government business if the ruling party win again.
(TheGuardian.com)