Ecuador picks conservative for president; Peru sets runoff for June 6
Ecuador will be led for the next four years by a conservative businessman after voters on Sunday rebuffed a left-leaning movement that yielded an economic boom and then a recession since taking hold of the presidency last decade. That election certainty, however, did not extend to neighboring Peru, where the presidential contest is headed to a runoff after none of the 18 candidates obtained more than 50% of the votes.
The South American nations held elections under strict public-health measures amid a surging coronavirus pandemic that has brought on new lockdowns and exacerbated a general sense of fatigue. Peru, which also elected a new Congress, reported its highest single-day COVID-19 death count just as voters headed to the polls.
The victory of former banker Guillermo Lasso in Ecuador came after less than half of a percentage point put him ahead of another candidate and allowed him to claim a spot in Sunday’s runoff. The result ends the country’s years under the socalled Correismo, a movement named after former President Rafael Correa, who governed from 2007 through 2017, grew increasingly authoritarian in the latter years of his presidency and was sentenced to prison last year in a corruption scandal.
Correa’s protégé,
Andres Arauz, easily advanced to the contest to replace President Lenin Moreno, who chose not to seek re-election. Moreno was also an ally of Correa but turned against him while in office. In the runoff, Lasso benefited from the discontent toward Correa and his allies, but he will face a strong Correista bloc in congress.
“For years, I have dreamed of the possibility of serving Ecuadorians so that the country progresses, so that we can all live better,” Lasso said Sunday night in a room full of
supporters despite socialdistancing guidelines in the port city of Guayaquil. “Today, you have resolved that this be so.”
Economist Nikhil Sanghani with the firm Capital Economics on Monday wrote that the divided National Assembly “may water down” some of Lasso’s policies, but that concerns over “a shift towards interventionist policymaking under Arauz” should give way to relief that left-wing populism did not prevail.
In Peru, 18 presidential hopefuls turned the election into a popularity contest in which an ultraconservative candidate even addressed how he suppresses his sexual desires. But none obtained the more than 50% of support needed to avoid a June 6 runoff.
Elections officials on Monday said leftist Pedro Castillo had 16.3% of support with 57.4% of votes counted. He was followed by right-wing economist Hernando de Soto, ultraconservative businessman Rafael Lopez Aliaga and Keiko Fujimori, the opposition leader and daughter of the polarizing former President Alberto Fujimori.