Elections in Ecuador: Lasso retracts and does not want more recount of votes

MADRID.- Guillermo Lasso, the center-right candidate for the presidency of Ecuador, retracted the agreement reached for the counting of the votes of the first electoral round, held on February 7, and asked the National Electoral Council (CNE) to ratify the electoral results.

In a letter to the CNE, Lasso requested that the results be promulgated “without prejudice to the corresponding challenges which have been presented in accordance with the law”. despite having agreed with the indigenous candidate, Yaku Pérez, a recount of votes in 17 of the country’s 24 provinces.

Lasso and Pérez are vying for second place in the presidential elections after obtaining 19.66% and 19.61% of the vote respectively.. In the first place, and with a greater advantage, is the correista candidate, Andrés Arauz, with 32.06% and who goes directly to the second round.

On Friday, the CNE announced that, in a meeting with Lasso and Pérez, an agreement had been reached to count 100% of the vote in Guayas province and to revise 50% of the vote in 16 other provinces.

However, in his letter, Lasso said he agreed with the review in Guayas, in the southwest of the country, but clarified that “if there was consensus with the rest of the candidates,” he would agree to access to be counted in the provinces of Los Ríos, Mananí, El Oro, Esmeraldas, Pichincha and Bolívar.

“It seems to me inefficient and a waste of time to open 50 percent of the polls in the 9 other provinces, which the candidate Pérez chose unilaterally, because in them he largely won me, and I accept the result”, said before to ensure that he “would never accept a possible intention to increase the result illegally in his favor and to my detriment in these provinces”.

Pérez, for his part, indicated on his Twitter account that Lasso is not the same as in 2017 given that over the past four years, in his opinion, “he has co-governed with the worst government, that of (Lenín) Moreno. “” That’s why he has no chance of succeeding if he reaches the second round, “he said.

“Why are you backing down on the vote count?” What did you and the CNE do that you don’t want Ecuador to know? For you, politics is a game, for me it is an opportunity to change the lives of millions of Ecuadorians. To open the ballot box is to defend democracy, ”he declared.

CNE president Diana Atamaint estimates that the recount of votes requested by Pérez will affect the polls of nearly 23,000 meetings across the country, according to information from the newspaper “El Comercio”.

“This means that we will have to revisit, open polls to count the votes by vote of 22,810 meetings across the country. Translated into number of votes, because some boards of directors have 250 to 300 voters, more or less, approximately six million votes will be reviewed, according to the agreements and the commitment of the CNE ”, he specified.

The process, he said, could take fifteen days in the case of Guayas and a little shorter in the case of the rest of the provinces. The agency expects the process to begin this week.

DPA Agency

THE NATION

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