Ecuador’s far-right president Daniel Noboa was re-elected with 55.6% of the valid votes, in the presidential run-off on April 13, defeating opposition candidate Luisa González by an 11-point margin.
However, González — leader of the Citizen Revolution party and ally of former president Rafael Correa — announced that she did not accept the results and alleged electoral fraud in a speech to her supporters, following the poll.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum questioned the legitimacy of the results and said that Mexico would not resume diplomatic ties with Ecuador as long as Noboa remains in office. This has been the case since April last year, when Ecuadorian police, under Noboa’s orders, broke into the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest former vice president Jorge Glas.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, while not mentioning claims of fraud, highlighted the “worrying” conditions under which the elections took place, in an X post on April 15.
“Opposition-majority areas were placed under a state of siege and military control two days before the elections,” Petro said. “Each polling booth had a strong uniformed and armed military presence.”
Petro called on the government to publish the voting records for each polling booth, which he also did following the Venezuelan presidential elections last year.
While González is yet to provide evidence of fraud in the actual voting tallies, the lead-up to the presidential elections was marked by electoral irregularities, unequal campaign resources and a media landscape that favoured Noboa.
Noboa refused to take leave during his campaign and openly used public money to fund it — in violation of the country’s electoral laws.
Noboa was favoured by a vast disparity in electoral campaign spending. Between March 7 and April 5, he spent more than US$396,000 (A$619,878) on advertisements for his personal Facebook page — more than four times the $78,000 (A$122,097) spent by González in the same period.
Noboa announced a series of one-off or short-term government payments to the population — worth $560 million (A$877 million) — which were denounced by some international observers as vote buying.
Following a meeting with United States President Donald Trump late last month, Noboa claimed that the US government had agreed to exclude Ecuadorians from mass deportation lists — which the US government has not confirmed.
This was a deliberate strategy to weaponise fear over deportations, which would affect the crucial flow of remittances from Ecuadorian migrants. Many Ecuadorians rely on the remittances sent by family members living in the US, which amounted to $4.8 billion (A$7.48 billion) last year.
Fear
Noboa tapped into the climate of fear to present himself as the only candidate capable of confronting soaring levels of violence.
Ecuador has the highest homicide rate in Latin America, with a killing every hour, on average. A survey of 15–35-year-olds last year found that 69% stopped going to public squares and parks and 67% stopped using public transport, for fear of violence.
Following the first round of the presidential elections, Noboa ramped up his rhetoric and promises to combat organised crime.
He enlisted Erik Prince, the founder of notorious US mercenary corporation Blackwater — who recently visited the country to form a “strategic alliance” to fight “narco-terrorism” — to support his campaign.
Prince urged Ecuadorians to vote for Noboa and smeared González. His comments were publicised through official government channels — which is prohibited.
Noboa enjoyed the support of corporate media, which failed to critique his policies and report on his electoral irregularities, while platforming his various false statements, such as that González and the RC would de-dollarise the economy.
Noboa seemingly co-opted the National Electoral Council (CNE) — the government agency responsible for organising elections — to act in his favour.
The CNE made a series of arbitrary decisions, such as denying the voting rights of nearly 10,000 Ecuadorians in Venezuela registered to vote, changing the location of polling booths at the last minute and banning the use of mobile phones at booths.
The CNE also remained silent about Noboa’s electoral law violations and other irregularities that may have influenced the result.
The day before the run-off vote, Noboa unexpectedly decreed a 60-day “state of exception” in seven provinces, suspending the right to free assembly, granting police and the army sweeping powers and imposing a curfew.
Those provinces were all won by González in the first round of the presidential elections.
The Noboa government also withdrew González’s bodyguards two days before the run-off elections — an intimidatory move, given the high level of violence against political figures.
Sociologist Franklin Ramírez Gallegos told Nueva Sociedad that the most recent elections “were the most unequal and opaque since the return to democracy [in 1979, following a military dictatorship] and disproportionately favoured [Noboa]”.
“Doubts about the results should be understood in light of the fraudulent nature of the whole process.”
Neoliberalism, militarism
Noboa’s presidency has been characterised by neoliberal policies, such as: the renewal of agreements with the International Monetary Fund; the expansion of extractive frontiers, particularly large-scale mining and oil extraction, which especially threaten indigenous communities in the highlands and Amazon; and privatisation and deregulation, for the benefit of big business and economic elites.
Since taking office in November 2023, Noboa has mostly ruled under a “state of exception”, purportedly to combat “organised crime”.
Noboa’s “Plan Phoenix” — large-scale police and military operations — represents the criminalisation of poor people, land defenders and anyone opposing the government’s neoliberal, extractivist agenda. It resulted in thousands of arrests, cases of torture, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances last year.
The Noboa family
The Noboa clan is the most wealthy and powerful family in the country, having built a banana empire through the 20th century. It now controls vast corporate conglomerates in the food, automotive, banking and hotel sectors.
It benefited from several government contracts awarded to companies controlled by family members.
Noboa’s supposed “tough-on-narcotrafficking” stance was belied by a Revista RAYA report that found that a family company, Noboa Trading, was involved in exporting huge quantities of cocaine hidden in banana shipments. The reporter who broke the story, Andrés Durán, was forced to flee the country after receiving death threats and being harassed by Noboa’s political party, National Democratic Action.
It is unlikely that members of the Noboa family will be prosecuted, despite allegedly contributing to Ecuador becoming the world’s biggest exporter of cocaine.
Political scientist Augusto Barrera Guarderas told Nueva Sociedad that Noboa’s re-election represents “the concentration of economic and political power with familial overtones, signalling a form of oligarchic regime”.
Noboa plans to replace the Constitution, introduced by the Correa government in 2008, to: allow for foreign military bases; increase the entry of private capital and privatisation of key industries, such as the state-owned electricity sector; and abolish the requirement to gain free, prior and informed consent from indigenous peoples for extractivist projects.
Noboa has already signed treaties that allow the US military to use the biodiversity-rich Galápagos Islands with impunity, despite significant social and environmental concerns. The government also plans to re-establish a US military base in the port city of Manta on the country’s central coast.
Resistance
The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) — Ecuador’s biggest Indigenous rights organisation — issued a statement following Noboa’s victory.
It said the government’s plans for a new constitution “would represent a setback in the rights achieved over decades of struggle and mobilisation: rights of nature, collective rights, prior consultation, Intercultural Bilingual Education [and] defence of land”.
It said the government’s alignment with the far right, such as Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei, is “part of a geopolitical and neocolonial strategy of total control and repression of social struggle across the continent”.
CONAIE reaffirmed its commitment to grassroots resistance and called on Ecuadorians to “remain alert, strengthen organisational spaces and prioritise unity in defence of our rights and territories”.
CONAIE played a key role in spearheading anti-neoliberal national strikes and uprisings in 2019 and 2022, and will form part of the crucial resistance to the Noboa government’s anti-people agenda.