Ecuador reopened its polls today in exceptional circumstances, with the pandemic overshadowing its present and therefore the economic recession threatening its future. Up to 13 million Ecuadorians were called to choose a rustic where it’s mandatory to try to do so and only hours after a replacement record of hospitalization of coronavirus patients was recorded. The Ministry of Health warned on Saturday night that the country suffers the most important wave of hospitalizations within the pandemic thus far, adding 1,672 people admitted, of which just about 500 remained in serious condition. In total, 257,412 infections from the primary day.
The images of corpses within the streets of Guayaquil went around the world 10 months ago, turning the second city of the Andean country into the symbol of the cruelty of an epidemic that was beginning. Ecuador already has quite 15,000 fatalities since then, one among the countries within the continent most battered by Covid. The pandemic thus made an appearance in elections during which it once more plays a number one role thanks to the deep depression during which it’s plunged its citizens. Ecuador may be a paradigm of the recession caused by Covid, after losing almost 9% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2020, with debt around 70% of that very same GDP and with reduced income thanks to the fault of the autumn within the price of oil.
An economic abyss that, during a contradictory way, has served almost as a redemption for the Citizen Revolution led by former President Rafael Correa, who under the label of Union for Hope hopes to reap the revenues from the collapse of recognition of the Lenin Moreno government. Sixteen candidates have persisted for weeks to become elected presidents, although only the correct Andres Arauz, the previous conservative banker Guillermo Lasso and therefore the indigenous leader Yaku Perez had possibilities, consistent with the polls, of getting to a second-round if within the vote of today none of them exceeded the five hundred bar or added quite 10 points of advantage over the second over 40%.
The 137 legislators of the National Assembly also are elected from quite 4,000 candidates, with a fragmented panorama. The triumph, one round, is merely possible if we leave to defend the vote of the Ecuadorians and be vigilant that the favored will is fulfilled,” Arauz harangued on his social networks. Unable to vote because he was registered in Mexico, Correa’s disciple sought his image at the polls by accompanying his 106-year-old grandmother Flor Galarza to vote.
What I can tell you is that there’ll be a second-round which I will be able to participate therein second round,” Lasso, however, anticipated the journalists who were expecting him outside his electoral center in Guayaquil. “All Ecuadorians want to change to not adopt a model whose recipes have failed altogether the countries of the planet where they need been adopted, he added. One of the large surprises during the primary hours of voting was citizen participation, which caused crowds at the polling stations and enormous lines to vote. Until now, in previous pandemic elections, like in Bolivia and therefore the Dominican Republic, the number of voters had been reduced, which had benefited political organizations with more powerful organizations, like Evo’s Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS).
There is an outsized turnout, people have come to vote earlier, “certified Diana Atamaint, president of the National Electoral Council (CNE). With the advancement of the day, concern was unleashed about the slowdown in voting rights, also a product of the measures of biosafety. Isabel de Saint-Malo, head of the observation mission of the Organization of yank States (OAS), involved patience within the face of the growing discomfort thanks to the long waits at the polling stations. The leftist candidacy “energetically” requested the CNE to avoid crowds abroad to hurry upvoting inside the centers.
The elections are happening within the midst of a populist offensive to regain lost ground within the region, after the victory in Bolivia of Luis Arce, elected by former President Evo Morales. Leftist leaders from Latin America and Europe have accompanied the strategy orchestrated by Correísmo to cast doubt on the CNE and therefore the very holding of the elections. And with a word, fraud, prepared between its arguments if things went wrong.
The economic solvency of Arauz’s campaign has not gone unnoticed in Ecuador, who was forced to deny a report within the Colombian magazine Semana, which accused him of getting received $ 80,000 from the National Liberation Army (ELN). This guerrilla, an ally of Chavismo, has turned Venezuela into its great sanctuary. If Arauz wins, not only Ecuador wins, but integration, Unasur and CELAC, which we’ve created with Chavez, Kirchner and Rafael Correa, seeking to make a Plurinational South America,” Evo Morales claimed on his social networks.
