Ruling party candidate and former vice president Lenín Moreno claimed victory in Ecuador’s presidential vote on Sunday, as supporters of conservative challenger Guillermo Lasso clashed with riot police in major cities, accusing authorities of permitting fraud in the election. With more than 99 percent of votes counted, Moreno had secured 51.2 percent of the votes compared with Lasso’s 48.8 percent, according to the electoral council. Lasso has called for a recount in every province of the nation, but the electoral council’s head, Juan Pablo Pozo, has appealed to the opposition to recognize the results. Who won Ecuador’s presidential election? How likely is it that a recount will be held, and does Lasso stand a good chance of seeing the results go in his favor? What do the election results signal for the political climate in Ecuador and the much talked-about ‘pink tide’ receding in Latin America? How strong of a mandate do either of the candidates have to carry out their agendas once confirmed?
Ramiro Crespo, president of Analytica Securities in Quito: “Make no mistake, there was fraud on the April 2 elections, largely built upon lessons learned on the first round in February. Back then, the Electoral National Council (CNE in Spanish), in a display of efficiency, had reported a large enough volume of results that any attempt to manipulate them without it being obvious was too late for the government. These results were much in line with Cedatos Gallup’s exit poll; and of course, the voice of thousands of citizens in the streets secured a victory for democracy. This time around, Cedatos and two other exit polls coincided on a 52 percent to 53 percent victory for Guillermo Lasso. The CNE had demanded such results be handed over an hour before votes closed, and then the CNE (alone) suffered a power outage and its website crashed for almost two hours, only to come back to life with Lasso at 49 percent. The statistical unlikelihood of this happening is in part explained by pictures of physical ballots where, when Lasso had more votes, his votes went to Lenín Moreno and vice versa by the time results hit the webpage. Far from a ‘good faith’ error, this evidence states the obvious: the election is being stolen. While Lasso will contest, to quote Joseph Stalin, ‘It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.’ The general fear is that any appeals process will be fruitless with the current justice channels being controlled by a quasi-dictatorship. It will come down to people going out on the streets once again, and support from Luis Almagro and the Organization of American States will go a long way.”
Walter Spurrier, president of Grupo Spurrier and director of Weekly Analysis in Guayaquil, Ecuador: “The results announced by electoral authorities are provisional; their personnel added results from the minutes of individual polling booths. According to law, minutes and votes from polling booths must be taken to provincial tribunals, for the official definitive tally. Representatives from either candidate may demand the recount of votes for any booth in which reported results are at odds with those from the minutes photographed by party delegates. Lasso is to challenge all suspicious booth-level results. We are in for a long official count. Any hastiness in proclaiming official results would be deemed foul play by the losing party. Lasso supporters are concerned that challenges are to be decided upon by an electoral body chaired by the brother of the just appointed new attorney general. There is no winner yet, but the dice are loaded in favor of Moreno. Were Moreno to be proclaimed winner, it would help build his legitimacy if there is a transparent, painstaking count. So far, the election looks like the one that pitted Venezuelan candidates Nicolas Maduro and Henrique Capriles against each other: very close and with half the nation thinking the elections were stolen. As in Venezuela, popularity of the pink tide wanes, but government continues being pink. In either case, the next president will have a weakened mandate, and inherits a fiscal deficit of 5 percent of GDP, which will render it arduous to deliver on campaign promises. Both candidates pledge to reach out to those who voted for the other. That is the most promising sign to cling to.”
Marc Becker, professor of history at Truman State University: “Lasso’s refusal to concede the election is reflective of the right’s broader attitude toward the electoral process: the only elections that they recognize as legitimate are the ones that they win; otherwise they cry fraud. It mirrors a broader hypocritical attitude that conservatives hold toward democracy. Rather than reflecting the popular will and leading to policies that benefit the majority of a country’s population—as was the case under the Correa administration and Moreno promises to continue under his—democracy becomes a rhetorical mechanism through which to achieve an upward redistribution of wealth at the cost to the country’s marginalized and impoverished majority. Lasso personally benefited from earlier financial crises, and he has promised to reinstate those same neoliberal economic policies that would increase his wealth even as it is harming the majority of those who voted for him. Outside observers cast Ecuador’s closely watched and tightly fought election as a plebiscite on Latin America’s left turn, but it is best understood in a local context. Correa was an outlier in that he was able to win majority support across the country—something no other politician has managed to do since a return to civilian rule in 1979. As has always been the case, the country is deeply divided. Correa alienated some of those who should have been his strongest supporters because of his caustic personality and dedication to extractive economies. It will now be up to Moreno to see if he can bridge those divides and build a strong base of support.”
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