The National Electoral Council has proclaimed, at dawn and amid accusations, the two candidates who will contest the second round on April 11. They are the correct Andres Arau z and the conservative leader Guillermo Lasso, who was already leading the scrutiny in the absence of a few tables abroad. Arauz, at the head of the Union for la Esperanza alliance, was the winner of the first round with 3,033,753 votes, which is equivalent to 32.72% of the support. Lasso occupies second place after a tough dispute with the indigenous leader, Yaku Perez. The first, who led the candidacy of the CREO Movement and the Social Christian Party (PSC), was left with 1,830,045 ballots (19.74%) compared to 1,797,445 votes (19.39%) of the Pachakutik candidate the political arm of various indigenous organizations.
In this way, the former banker and conservative candidate will contest the ballot by a scarce 32,600 votes and only 0.35%, although Perez can still present the challenges and appeals that he deems appropriate, after two weeks in which almost everything has happened. and whose controversy has increased in recent hours. The CNE called a session yesterday Saturday and suspended it to investigate 18 electoral records that presented inconsistencies, among them those that the indigenous candidate Yaku Perez included in his letter to the in the midst of his complaints of electoral fraud. To these minutes those claimed by the Pachakutik coordinator, Marlon Santi, were added during the day. During the early hours of the morning, both the first 18 minutes and the 26 that were in Pachakutik’s proposal were validated without the scrutiny undergoing major modifications.
To further confuse the matter, the Prosecutor’s Office announced the registration, retention, and collection of information from the electoral computer system database, which would take place at 7:30 local time on Sunday (1:30 in Spain). Previously, the State Comptroller General, Pablo Celi, had asked the CNE “to adopt a resolution that enables the start of a computer audit, by the State Comptroller General, before the second round takes place.” An internal report dated August last year alluded to technological inconsistencies and in the protocol for sealing the database.
Democracy has triumphed, we are going with courage and optimism to this second round, Lasso celebrated early in the morning, although in the previous hours he had warned of the intervention of authorities outside the process and of the partial withdrawal of the police guard at headquarters of the CNE. Both Arauz and his political boss, former President Rafael Correa, warned in similar terms. They seek to remove the computer equipment to prevent the second round from taking place. The Ecuadorian people will not allow this attack against their democracy.
Also early in the morning, they denied Yaku Perez’s request to recount 100% of the records of the coastal province of Guayas whose capital is Guayaquil, and 50% of the records of 16 of the 24 provinces of the country although That was the agreement reached between the indigenous leader and Lasso at the electoral headquarters. Meanwhile, Yaku Perez has taken the lead in the indigenous march heading towards Quito. The protesters estimate that they will arrive in the capital next Tuesday, after advancing from Loja to Cuenca and Canar. The Unitary Workers’ Front (FUT), after blaming the CNE for the impasse that the country is suffering, has announced that it will join the indigenous protest when it has already reached the capital.
