In yesterday’s presidential run-off election, incumbent Daniel Noboa claimed victory with 55.88% of the vote against 44.12% for his opponent Luisa González of the Citizen Revolution party. But the election was rife with irregularities, showing González’s with exactly the same vote percentage she received in the first round, which is statistically impossible and contrary to all polls showing her doing very well. She is refusing to recognize the results and calling for a recount, claiming she’s the victim of “the most grotesque vote fraud in the history of the Ecuadorian republic … we are living in a dictatorship.”
Among the irregularities is the fact that on election day, Noboa suddenly declared a “state of exception” in the seven regions that were González strongholds, canceling constitutional and civil rights, allowing the police and the military to enter homes without a warrant, do search and seizure on “national security” grounds. Millionaire Noboa is a thug, heir to a banana fortune who was born and raised in the U.S. and prepared to do anything to win. At the very least, deploying security forces in this way was intended to intimidate people or dissuade them from voting. Recall that his mercenary friend, Erik Prince of Blackwater fame, deployed on the streets in an antidrug operation with the military and police and publicly called on Ecuadorians to vote for Noboa one week before the election.
Friends of the Schiller Institute in Ecuador warn that the electoral results augur a period of greater conflict, militarization and greater poverty and misery for the population. Noboa is totally aligned with Donald Trump and Israel and is anxious to bring in foreign troops and reinstate the U.S. military base that had existed in the coastal city of Manta until 2008. He is likely to transfer the Ecuadorian Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
