Daniel Noboa Wins Ecuador’s Extraordinary Elections

With more than 90% of the ballots counted, Ecuador's National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Daniel Noboa the winner in Sunday's extraordinary elections.

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With 91.78% of the valid votes processed, the CNE declared Noboa, of the National Democratic Action (ADN) alliance, the winner with 52.30% of the votes; while Luisa Gonzalez, of the Citizen Revolution (RC) movement, obtained 47.70%.

The president of the CNE, Diana Attamaint, said that these are irrevocable results, since more than 90% of the ballots have been counted. 

A little more than 13.4 million eligible voters were called to the polls to elect the successor of President Guillermo Lasso. According to the electoral authorities in the South American country, the process counted with a high citizen participation of 82.33%.

The CNE president congratulated the Ecuadorian people for their high voter turnout and their civic-mindedness. "Today democracy won. Today, Ecuador won," Attamaint said. 

Noboa, 35 years old, thus becomes the youngest president in the history of Ecuador. He achieves the position that his father, banker magnate Alvaro Noboa, sought five times without success.

 "Tomorrow we begin to work for this new Ecuador and to rebuild a country that has been hard hit by violence, corruption and hatred," said Noboa in a brief meeting with supporters.

The tweet reads, "Today we have made history, Ecuadorian families chose the New Ecuador, they chose a country with security and employment. Let's go for a country of realities where promises do not remain in the campaign and corruption is punished. Thank you Ecuador."

Gonzalez accepted his presidential defeat to Noboa and congratulated him. "The Ecuadorian people listened to his proposals," she said, and asked Noboa to fulfill the promises he made during the electoral campaign.

"We have made history, it is the first time that a woman reaches the second presidential round and has options to be president of the Republic," Gonzalez said in an act surrounded by members of her political movement and supporters in a hotel in the north of the capital, Quito.

She also expressed the support of her political organization to the president-elect to move forward the country plagued by the rise of violence.

The elected President will govern until May 2025 to complete the four-year term of Guillermo Lasso, who last May called for the mechanism known as cross death. In this way, Lasso dissolved by decree the National Assembly and called for early elections, in the midst of an impeachment trial against him for embezzlement. 

Today's elections were held amid a wave of violence and insecurity plaguing Ecuador, with a rise in organized crime and a prison crisis.