President's handpicked successor claims victory in Ecuador as opposition candidate cries foul.
| Autor | Saavedra, Luis Angel |
Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa's handpicked successor, Lenrn Moreno, was declared the winner of the April 2 presidential elections with 51.15% of the vote. But two weeks later, Moreno has not been able to overcome the uncertainty caused by the way the Consejo Nacional Electoral (National Electoral Council, CNE) handled the vote count and by the contradicting results presented by three pollsters, who gave the win to Guillermo Lasso, the opposition candidate. Lasso has charged there was election fraud.
Government mobilizes against Lasso
At the end of the first electoral round, Moreno was just shy of the 40% that would allow him to win outright--he had 39.36% and Lasso, 28.09%. For the runoff, the Moreno and Lasso waged an aggressive campaign unlike any seen in Ecuador since its return to democracy in 1979 (NotiSur, Feb. 4, 2011, Nov. 11, 2016,March 10, 2017).
The government itself launched a defamation campaign against Lasso, connecting him to the 1999 bank holiday that led the country to bankruptcy. Lasso was unable to refute accusations made in the official media because to do so, he would have had to expose the real culprits who were, in great part, linked to the Partido Social Cristiano (Social Christian Party, PSC), a party that had promised to support him in the second round of voting.
Lasso's Banco de Guayaquil benefited from the bank holiday by buying securities issued by the government to settle the creditors of failed banks. But Lasso himself did not participate in the decision made by then-President Jamil Mahuad (1998-2000) to declare the bank holiday, nor was his bank part of the group of banks that went bankrupt for having committed large amounts of capital in unsecured loans tied to the owners of the failed banks (NotiSur, Oct. 1, 1999, and March 10, 2017).
Physical attacks
During the campaign, Lasso was threatened on several occasions, the worst occurring March 28 at the Atahualpa Olympic Stadium during the game featuring the Ecuadoran national team, when a group of people began throwing rocks at him, his wife, and his children. A government agency allegedly purchased a large number of tickets for seats near the area where Lasso would be seated. Neither the number of seats purchased nor the identity of the government agency have been identified. However, more than 500 people did surround Lasso inside and outside the stadium.
Moreno, with the full support of the government, traveled from one end of the country to the other...
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