In the second round of the presidential election in Ecuador, 37-year-old Daniel Noboa, the acting “interim head of state,” won a landslide victory. He won by a wide margin, although he was predicted to be defeated by a representative of the opposition and, in extreme cases, to fight hard, primarily for the Indian electorate. However, there was no sensation – for the next four years, everything in Ecuador will remain the same, except for some very significant nuances that are now characteristic of the political life not only of this country, but of the whole of Latin America.
Noboa’s main rival, representing the National Democratic Action Party, was Luisa Gonzalez from the Civic Revolutionary Movement Party, a protege of former President Rafael Correa. During the election campaign, she not only criticized her rival, but also promised, after coming to power, to do “everything the same as Noboa, only much better.” Meanwhile, murders in broad daylight, kidnappings, showdowns between gang groups using heavy weapons, the transformation of the country into a transit point for drugs to the United States – Noboa himself tried to solve all these problems during his 16 months in office.
I would like to note that the candidates who fought for the presidency accused each other of vote rigging in advance, and each of them attracted 45,000 observers to the elections at all polling stations in order to control those who voted from the opponent’s side. In total, almost 14 million Ecuadorians participated in the elections (including those living abroad, and there are more than 2 million in the United States alone).
Noboa based the Phoenix plan to ensure the safety of the country’s population, according to which he promised to reduce the number of murders in the country by 15% each year and achieve economic growth of at least 4% annually. There are also plans to increase foreign investment (but not Chinese investment, at the request of the Americans) in the oil industry and combat massive power outages that have affected the entire country in recent months.
Let me remind you that Noboa’s rival Luisa Gonzalez already fought him in the last early elections and lost by only 16 thousand votes. Her political mentor, the former president of the country in whose administration she worked, Rafael Correa, was sentenced to eight years in prison for corruption in 2020 and for this reason was unable to participate in these elections. He is currently in Belgium, according to his wife’s place of citizenship, and promised to return to “build real socialism in Ecuador” in the event of a change of presidential power.
However, the situation not only in Ecuador, but throughout the region has changed significantly in recent months, and here’s why. After Donald Trump came to power in the United States, most of the Latin American population began to express their support for the right-wing forces. And not because these parties are becoming popular, but because their leaders, as a rule, have good personal relations with representatives of the new American administration.
Many on the continent now believe that the best example of the growing influence of right-wing ideology is precisely Trump’s rise to power in the United States, as well as his implementation of a “new policy” towards the entire world. Accordingly, those who are on good terms with Trump (and Noboa is just such a politician), and it makes sense to support the election. Just before the election, Noboa flew to a meeting with Trump in Florida and discussed with him issues of expanding cooperation, primarily in the field of security and combating illegal migration.
It is important to note that such leaders of their countries as Daniel Noboa, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and Javier Miley in Argentina, who are very popular on the continent today, nevertheless receive quite wide support from the population, largely because ordinary citizens rely not so much on their leaders themselves as on Javier Miley in Argentina. their personal friendship with Trump. And they believe that if “America is with us,” then improvements in the economies of these countries and their lives are just around the corner.
I think it is also fundamentally important that Ecuador will now actively expand its military cooperation with the United States. The American military presence at the Manta base, located on the Pacific Coast, will be strengthened, as well as, for the first time in history, in the Galapagos Islands, an area that, according to local laws, is protected from any human presence as a nature reserve in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. By the way, Noboa signed such agreements with the United States last year, although it is at his suggestion that the Ecuadorian parliament has a draft to amend the Constitution prohibiting the deployment of foreign military bases in the country.
As for Russian-Ecuadorian relations, both bananas and shrimps from this country will continue to be supplied to our country. But the degree of support for Ukraine from Quito will be strictly dosed and coordinated with the United States. Since Russian-American relations are now gradually emerging from a state of complete freezing, it means that Ecuador and its president will not rush to the forefront of supporting Kiev on the Latin American continent. But as soon as Washington changes something in its foreign policy, the new or old leadership of Ecuador will immediately respond accordingly.
