Ecuador: Indigenous Party Call for Mobilization To Defend Votes

The Pachakutik Movement called for a national mobilization to defend the "popular will" in case its presidential candidate Yaku Perez does not make it to the second round of elections to be held on April 11.

RELATED:

Ecuador's Right-Wing Candidate Lasso Not Giving up Yet

This call comes amid a slow vote count in which official figures still cannot determine who is in second place and, therefore, who will compete with the Union for Hope (UNES) candidate Andres Arauz for the presidency.

As of Wednesday morning, the National Electoral Council (CNE) had counted 99.54 percent of the tally sheets of the February 7 elections.

According to the partial results, Perez had 19.72 percent of the votes and banker Guillermo Lasso got 19.59 percent of the votes.

Over the last 2 days, however, the absolute difference in votes between both candidates was decreasing in favor of Lasso, who previously emphasized that second place will not be defined until all votes are counted.

So far, the CNE has processed 99.54 percent of the electoral records, of which 95.85 percent have already been computed. However, there is still 3.69 percent of them that must be reviewed again because they had a registration problem.

Pachakutik holds that the delay in the declaration of results is a political maneuver orchestrated by the extreme right to prevent Perez from winning.

"We are not going to allow them to steal our victory and our right to participate in the second round of elections," it said.