The indigenous presidential candidate of Ecuador, Yaku Perez, presented this Thursday to the Prosecutor’s Office a complaint about the alleged fraud against him in the elections last Sunday, whose partial scrutiny places him in a fierce dispute for second place with the center-right candidate Guillermo Lasso. Perez, who led a colorful march through the streets of Quito, handed over to the State Attorney General, Diana Salazar, the complaint about alleged irregularities in the computer system of the National Electoral Council (CNE) that harmed him.
Dozens of people, most of them indigenous, accompanied the candidate Pérez, who wore a small peasant hat and a scarf around his neck, as he was seen in the electoral campaign. With a megaphone in hand, the march traveled several kilometers to one of the offices of the State Attorney General’s Office in downtown Quito to present the complaint.
Salvador Quispe, leader of the Pachakutik indigenous movement and who has reached a seat in the next legislature, indicated to Perez’s supporters that the complaint has been submitted to the Prosecutor’s Office with indications of the alleged fraud.
ALLEGED IRREGULARITIES
Quispe said that his movement has information on an irregularity detected in the CNE’s computer system, for which many votes that corresponded to Perez were ultimately in favor of Lasso. “The system makes some automatic change” that redirects the votes of the indigenous in favor of his rival, added Quishpe, emphasizing that “this is electoral fraud, it is a crime; that could not be allowed. The complaint requests the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the case, determine responsibilities and apply the sanctions of the case. While that demand advances, the Pachakutik movement will insist on its request to the CNE to “open the polls and proceed to the vote-by-vote recount” of all the votes in the past elections, he added.
On his side, Perez estimated that the Ecuadorian population is tired of the violence and chaos generated, according to what he said, by the CNE. He stressed that if the Electoral Council streamlines and makes the counting of all the votes more transparent, this will allow all political actors to respect the final results. If after this verification process Lasso candidate obtains second place, the indigenous people “will be the first to recognize,” although the candidate from the right should also do so if Pérez turns out to have a better vote, challenged the indigenous. Perez and Lasso maintain a narrow difference in votes, according to the partial result of the CNE that aspires to complete the vote today, although it must also resolve Perez’s request for the recount of all votes in seven provinces where it believes that the assumption has occurred fraud.
