Ecuador ponders return to socialism in presidential runoff

QUITO (Reuters) – Ecuadoreans were voting in a presidential runoff on Sunday to decide whether to maintain the pro-market policies of the last four years or return to the socialism of the preceding decade as the Andean country seeks to revive its stagnant economy.

Left-wing economist Andrés Arauz won the first round of the election in February, gaining almost 33% of the vote, on promises of generous cash handouts and a resumption of the socialist policies of former president Rafael Correa.

Arauz’s rival, banker and third-time presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso, is promising to create jobs through foreign investment and financial support for the agricultural sector. Lasso won just shy of 20% of the first-round ballots.

Indigenous activist Yaku Pérez, who narrowly lost out to Lasso for a runoff slot is calling on supporters to spoil their ballots to protest what he called electoral fraud in the first round.

The vote will hinge on the roughly 15% of the electorate who remain undecided, said Francis Romero, director of pollster Click Report, describing the figure as unusually high.

“[The undecided] see that neither option has the capacity to get the country out of the economic and health crises that it’s in,” said Romero.

The oil-exporting nation’s economy was already weak due to low crude prices when the novel coronavirus outbreak started. The pandemic has pushed a third of the population into poverty and left half a million people unemployed.

President Lenin Moreno, who is not seeking reelection, imposed painful austerity measures as part of a $6.5 billion financing agreement with the International Monetary Fund, but was unable to kick-start the economy.