Ecuador's Lenin Still Winner After Presidential Vote Recount

At a press conference with both parties present, Ecuador's National Electoral Council announced Monday official results after a recount of the runoff presidential election that took place on April 2, giving the win to leftist candidate Lenin Moreno, who beat banker-turned-candidate Guillermo Lasso.

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The results gave Moreno 5,060,424 votes or 51.15 percent, while Lasso received 4,833,828 votes or 48.85 percent. In addition, there were 69,898 blank votes and 672,234 nulled votes.

The president of the National Electoral Council, or CNE, Juan Pablo Pozo denounced death threats against him Monday after right-wing vice presidential candidate Andres Paez tweeted out intimidating and insulting attacks on the official. Pozo said that the threatening parties would be held accountable if anything were to happen to him or his family.

For days, Lasso and his CREO-SUMA coalition claimed the elections were “fraudulent” and “rigged” in favor of Moreno, despite the fact that the Organization of American States international observers found “no discrepancies between the observed records and the official data” from the CNE. Since the election, Argentina, Paraguay, Panama, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, El Salvador, Colombia and Venezuela and even the U.S. have all congratulated Moreno on his election win.

But Lasso has refused to admit clear defeat, instead inciting violent protests in several cities across Ecuador, demanding a recount the rest of the region doesn't believe is necessary.

Pozo said on Twitter Sunday that 100 percent of the votes had been recounted, leaving no other options for the opposition than to either accept the results or appeal.

Despite the formal invitation of both parties, the CNE also reported the absence of CREO-SUMA delegates, who arrived at 11:00 a.m. local time, after the waiting parties had suspended the vote recount twice due to their absence.

Lasso, who created and acts as director, president, and secretary of 10 offshore companies in Panama and is linked to 49 tax haven companies accordig to an investigation by Pagina 12, went as far as claiming at a Wednesday press conference that he had “a mountain of documents” proving there was election fraud. These documents, however, were just printed versions of favorable exit polls from opposition media.

The governing party PAIS Alliance also announced plans to take legal action against opposition media outlets including Ecuavisa and Canal Uno as well as controversial pollster Cedatos, which all released misleading exit polls favoring Lasso’s victory.

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CORRECTION

An earlier version of this article stated that Lasso was featured in the Panama Papers. He has companies in Panama but was not in the papers. This article was originally published April 10, 2017, updated April 11, 2017 at 9:44 a.m.