Ecuadorian President 2021: Yaku Pérez and the nearly two million invalid votes in Ecuadorian elections | International

“I neither command nor dispose, do what your conscience determines. However, I neither trust nor trust the finalist candidates. They stole our # Elecciones2021 but not the hope. We are the third way, from the resistance together, we will make the #Ecuador we dream of. Yaku Pérez, the candidate of indigenous origin, with a career forged in activism for water and land, posted this message on his Twitter account on March 18.

He did so almost a month later, after an arduous two-week recount, the National Electoral Council confirmed the second-round transfer of Guillermo Lasso, who would eventually win the election. The difference between the two was only 32,600 votes, and Yaku Pérez remained in his fraud complaint. From this position, he could not support Lasso, moreover a liberal-conservative very far removed from the economic postulates defended by Pachakutik. An alliance with Andrés Arauz, who was part of Correist governments against which Pérez himself, the party he leads today and the platform he chaired today, has demonstrated on numerous occasions, did not seem not viable either (ECUARUNARI is its Quechua acronym, translated as Confederation of Peoples of Kichwa Nationality of Ecuador).

Yaku Pérez voted a draw last Sunday, April 11. In Ecuador, voting is compulsory and non-compliance without a valid reason is punishable by penalties of 10% of the monthly minimum wage. Null or blank options are therefore quite common in the country’s votes.

But never in the past two decades so much as this time. The closest precedent was the first round of 2006, when more than a million votes fell to zero. That year, a poorly defined draw campaign began to circulate. But it would descend in a second round strongly polarized around the figure of Rafael Correa, then a candidate. In 2021, the opposite happened: the draw in the first round was already abnormally high: once again more than a million people. This alternative has been developing since 2013, perhaps partly taken advantage of in the aforementioned 2006 “ peak ”.

Thus, Pérez relied on an expression of discontent at the polls that was nothing new. It worked, especially in the backbone of the Andean highlands. In Cotopaxi, Bolívar, Cañar or Azuan, 3 votes out of 10 have fallen to zero.

The power of the draw is also noticeable in the rest of the interior, much more than on the coast. The regional pattern is actually quite clear: where Pérez got the most votes in the first round, the draw growth has been more pronounced. The correlation is undeniable.

The first round saw another surprise candidacy, with a much more urban profile: Xavier Hervás grew up relying on actions on social media to reach a remarkable fourth place that the polls did not fully anticipate. One could assume that many of their supports also fed the draw, but this hypothesis does not support a simple regional analysis similar to the one supporting the “Pérez thesis”: no significant correlation is observed.

Hervás and Pérez both fueled the vote for Lasso. The first specifically requested support, while the second did not. But the relationship can be seen with both.

Any two-round election involves a double prism to observe a country. In the first, if there is no clear leadership, the prism is kaleidoscopic, plural. In the second, polarization forces a dichotomy. In this case, Anti-Corréism concentrated an unusual regional growth for a Lasso who started second, tied with third. Arauz, on the other hand, barely grew up, even where he was most successful. In fact, proportionately, the draw has increased more than him in his top 5 provinces. In the Andean Azuay, “nil” and Andrés Arauz are tied at 30%.

“How can we not understand their indignation,” said Yaku Pérez in the video accompanying the message of rejection addressed to the two candidates. “Don’t cry for those who fight, let’s fight not to cry.” Just as Pérez built this candidacy on decades of activism, his bridge to the other will be maintained thanks to a scandal that preceded him, but which he is able to meet, with a figure of 1.7. million.

Methodology and sources. Analysis carried out with the official results offered by the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Ecuador, on Monday April 12 at 9 a.m., with more than 99% of the files scrutinized.