Daniel Noboa has been re-elected as president of Ecuador with a margin that has stunned maximum observers. Simply weeks sooner than the April 13 runoff, polls had him neck and neck along with his left-wing rival, Luisa González. In spite of everything, Noboa secured about 56% of the vote towards González’s 44%, a distinction of greater than 1 million votes.
The victory provides Noboa, a 37-year-old businessman and political outsider, a complete four-year mandate. Noboa received a shortened presidential time period in November 2023 in a snap election referred to as when his predecessor, Guillermo Lasso, dissolved congress in an try to break out impeachment.
It additionally marks the 1/3 consecutive presidential defeat for the motion led via former president, Rafael Correa, whose affect stays polarising in Ecuadorian politics.
González is, on the time of writing, refusing to concede, claiming “grotesque” electoral fraud. “I refuse to believe that the people prefer lies over the truth”, she has mentioned. However she has offered no proof to strengthen the allegation.
Global observers, together with the EU and the Organisation of American States, have showed the elections have been loose and truthful. Within the absence of evidence, the fraud claims seem to be extra political theatre than an actual problem to the integrity of the vote.
Luisa González has now not authorised the effects, calling Noboa’s victory the ‘most grotesque fraud’ in Ecuador’s historical past.
Jose Jacome / EPA
Political scion to dominant incumbent
Noboa’s marketing campaign leaned closely on safety – a theme that has come to dominate Ecuadorian public existence as the rustic grapples with report ranges of violence. Since assuming the presidency in 2023, Noboa has ruled beneath an everlasting state of emergency.
He declared an “internal armed conflict” in early 2024, deployed the army in prisons and at the streets, and introduced a wide-ranging safety plan referred to as Plan Fénix. This plan comprises constructing a brand new maximum-security jail within the coastal province of Santa Elena modelled on El Salvador’s much-criticised technique to curtailing violence.
To begin with, those measures received Noboa popular strengthen. However the image quickly darkened. January 2025 was once Ecuador’s maximum violent month on report, with 781 homicides. Prison teams stay entrenched within the nation’s port towns and prisons. And human rights organisations have raised critical considerations about arbitrary arrests, the over the top use of drive, and the militarisation of civilian existence.
In spite of those setbacks, Noboa’s message of power and order obviously resonated with citizens. Ecuadorians, exhausted via spiralling violence, seem prepared to just accept extra authoritarian governance in trade for protection. This can be a pattern observed around the area, from President Nayib Bukele’s 2024 re-election in El Salvador to emerging popularity of militarised policing in Brazil, Honduras and Mexico.
Ecuadorian safety forces detain two males right through an operation in Guayaquil, a port town in western Ecuador.
Mauricio Torres / EPA
The demanding situations Noboa now faces are daunting. Probably the most urgent is Ecuador’s descent into organised crime and narco-violence. Positioned between Colombia and Peru, the rustic has change into a significant transit hub for cocaine certain for the USA and Europe. Robust global cartels have partnered with native gangs, and the state has misplaced regulate over massive swaths of territory.
In reaction, Noboa has now not most effective empowered the military however has additionally sought global help. In 2024, he met with Erik Prince, the founding father of Blackwater, a debatable US personal army contractor. This raised considerations in regards to the outsourcing of Ecuador’s safety and its implications for human rights. He has additionally floated the speculation of internet hosting overseas troops in Ecuador, a suggestion that will require a constitutional modification.
However militarised answers on my own didn’t carry an finish to violence right through Noboa’s first time period, nor are they most likely to reach his 2nd.
Ecuador’s safety disaster isn’t just an issue of policing – this is a disaster of state capability. The judiciary is riddled with corruption, prisons have change into centres of prison coordination, and cops are incessantly outgunned and underpaid. With out reforming those establishments, Noboa’s struggle on crime dangers changing into a struggle endlessly.
On the identical time, Ecuador’s financial system is faltering. In 2024, the rustic fell into recession, with GDP contracting and inflation emerging. Ecuador is reliant on hydropower for its electrical energy technology, and a ancient drought that 12 months brought about blackouts lasting as much as 14 hours an afternoon. This published years of under-investment in infrastructure.
In reaction, Noboa raised VAT, reduce gasoline subsidies, and secured a US$4 billion (kind of £3 billion) mortgage from the Global Financial Fund. Those unpopular measures provoked grumbling however now not mass protests, a reality some analysts characteristic to exhaustion somewhat than approval.
Inequality stays prime, particularly for younger other folks and the ones dwelling in rural and coastal areas. Unemployment and underemployment have an effect on just about part of the working-age inhabitants, and round one-third of Ecuadorians reside in poverty. Noboa has introduced new money transfers and formative years employment programmes, however those are palliative, now not structural.
To make issues worse, Noboa governs with restricted strengthen within the Nationwide Meeting. His celebration, Acción Democrática Nacional, holds 66 of the chamber’s 151 seats – one not up to González’s Citizen Revolution.
The Indigenous Pachakutik celebration controls a a very powerful bloc of 9 seats, however is itself internally divided. Passing regulation would require constructing coalitions and compromising. Those are talents that Noboa has but to show at scale.
Noboa’s credibility has additionally been challenged. His circle of relatives’s banana export corporate, Noboa Buying and selling, has been connected to a couple of drug seizures in Europe. Whilst there is not any proof implicating Noboa immediately, the revelations elevate uncomfortable questions in regards to the president’s anti-drug narrative and doable conflicts of passion.
The chief of the Pachakutik celebration, Leonidas Iza.
Jose Jacome / EPA
In opposition to democratic reform
Noboa’s victory provides him a chance, however now not a clean cheque. His good fortune will now rely on whether or not he can pivot from ruling via decree to governing via consensus. The general public expects effects: much less violence, extra jobs and bigger political balance.
To satisfy those expectancies, he’ll wish to repair the rule of thumb of legislation, give protection to human rights and construct inclusive establishments in a position to resisting prison seize. This implies professionalising the police, strengthening the judiciary and tackling the deep inequalities that gasoline violence and depression.
It additionally approach stepping again from theatrical gestures, equivalent to alliances with overseas mercenaries, and that specialize in the sluggish, incessantly irritating paintings of state-building.
Within the coming months, Noboa will face a easy however profound take a look at: can he translate his electoral mandate into actual, lasting development for a rustic at the edge? Ecuador’s long term would possibly rely at the resolution.
