By Alexandra Valencia and Yury Garcia
QUITO/GUAYAQUIL (Reuters) – Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa looks likely to win Sunday’s presidential election, as voters rally behind his promises to fight crime, despite critiques from his opponents that he has not done enough.
Noboa, first elected in 2023 to finish out his predecessor’s term, says his deployment of the military on the streets and within prisons, among other measures, has reduced violent deaths by 15%, led to a drastic fall in prison violence, and facilitated the capture of major gang leaders.
His 15 opponents have said more needs to be done to fight the drug trade-related crime that has rocked Ecuador in recent years, but some of their proffered solutions would require likely tricky legislative approval or constitutional changes. Other policy ideas, like increased security at borders and ports, Noboa says he is already implementing.
“Today Ecuador has changed and wants to keep changing, it wants to consolidate its triumph. We are not a promise anymore, we are a reality in this country, which has taken a decision,” Noboa said at a closing campaign rally on Thursday in Quito. “This Sunday, reclaim your ability to dream.”
“The president has done in a year many things that previous governments couldn’t do,” said student Kevin Galarza, 20, who attended Noboa’s closing campaign rally in Guayaquil. “Noboa will win in the first round – he’s our hope.”
Noboa, the 37-year-old heir to a business fortune, has said he intends to win outright on Sunday. Two major opinion polls have indicated he could – either by getting more than 50% of the vote or by winning at least 40% while being 10 points ahead of his nearest rival.
Other surveys suggest he will not win outright on Sunday but would triumph in an April run-off against leftist Luisa Gonzalez, who he also faced in 2023.
Both candidates have urged their voters to watch counts at polling stations in an effort to prevent any fraud, with politicians from Gonzalez’s party calling for a “defense of popular will.”
Gonzalez says she would respond to crime with major military and police operations, pursue allegedly corrupt judges and prosecutors, and implement a social spending plan in the most violent areas.
“We can’t talk about controlling violence without thinking of social justice, of building an Ecuador with peace, not with war,” said Gonzalez, 47, who is a protege of former President Rafael Correa, as she closed her campaign in Guayaquil. “We are moving toward this transformation with each one of you…we’ll save ourselves, together.”
Correa said this week that Gonzalez is ahead in polling and that her winning in a first round was not impossible.
“She’s the only one with a coherent plan and the necessary experience to govern the country,” said architect Diego Soria, 56, at Gonzalez’s final event in Quito. “We have an elite who are safe and for them the country is in a good place. The people need security, work, health and education.”
Noboa, mired in a spat with his vice president that had threatened to stymie his campaigning, has announced several eleventh hour policies that seem designed to attract voter attention, including help for migrants who return from the United States, tariffs on Mexican imports and a trade deal with Canada.
He is expected to cast his ballot in Olon, in coastal Santa Elena province, while Gonzalez is set to vote in Canuto, in Manabi province. Voters will also elect 151 members of the national assembly legislature.
(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia in Quito and Yury Garcia in Guayaquil; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
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