Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Ecuadoreans vote for president
Leftist Moreno claims victory, but rival demands recount.
QUITO, Ecuador — Leftist candidate Lenin Moreno won Ecuador’s presidential runoff Sunday, according to official results, reversing a recent rightward trend in Latin American politics and continuing President Rafael Correa’s “Citizens’ Revolution.”
But opposition candidate Guillermo Lasso, a conservative former banker who had already claimed victory based on three exit polls that showed him winning, immediately demanded a recount.
“We will know how to defend the people’s will,” Lasso said.
With more than 94 percent of the vote counted, Moreno won 51.1 percent of the votes to Lasso’s 48.9 percent. The head of the National Electoral Council called on the candidates to recognize the results.
But a separate quick count by Cedatos, a respected Ecuadorean group, had earlier said the race was a technical tie with a difference of less than 0.6 of a percentage point separating the two candidates. The group refrained from saying which candidate was leading until the electoral authorities made their pronouncement.
“The moral fraud of the right-wing won’t go unpunished,” Correa said on Twitter, arguing that the Cedatos poll was paid for by a bank partly owned by Lasso.
Earlier, a jubilant Lasso told supporters in Guayaquil that he would free political prisoners and heal divisions created by 10 years of Correa’s rule.
“Today a new Ecuador has been born,” Lasso said to loud shouts of “freedom” and “get out thieves.”
“Behind us are those dark pages of hatred among Ecuadoreans,” he said.
Moreno on Sunday had urged supporters to wait for official results that he said would confirm his “triumph.” The former vice president had led a contentious first-round election on Feb. 19, where the 64-year-old fell just short of the required threshold to avoid a runoff.
Lasso, 61, had bet that frustration over Ecuador’s sagging economy and Correa’s heavy-handed style would lift him to an upset win.
Left-wing populists such as Correa used the commodity boom earlier this decade to cut poverty and cultivate support, but the region has suffered as prices for oil and other exports continue to slump. Analysts expect Ecuador’s economy to shrink by 2.7 percent this year.
The change in fortunes has tilted Argentina and Peru to the right, and many leftists saw the mild-mannered Moreno as their best chance to break the rightward trend.
Moreno’s campaign, led by Correa, cast Lasso as a wealthy, out-of-touch politician who profited from the country’s 1999 banking crisis. Moreno was shot in a 1998 carjacking, and he is the first candidate in a wheelchair to win a presidential race in Latin America.
“We know how to put ourselves in your shoes, understand your dreams and wishes,” Moreno said in a final campaign announcement.
Lasso, however, has benefited from ongoing corruption allegations related to bribes that Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht paid to officials in Correa’s government and a $12 million contracting scandal at state-run PetroEcuador.
Lasso put forward a pro-business agenda aimed at attracting foreign investment, reducing taxes and generating more jobs. In recent days he drew comparisons between continuing a Correa-style government and going down the same path as socialist Venezuela, which is so economically crippled that the average Venezuelan shopper now spends 35 hours a month waiting in line.
After casting his ballot in his native Guayaquil, Lasso said he voted “for change, so Ecuador can recover its freedom.”