Elections in Ecuador: two models and many undecided …

From Quito. Ecuador is on the verge of presidential elections. The campaigns officially ended on Thursday, when Andrés Arauz and Guillermo Lasso closed their acts Quito and Guayaquil, the two main capitals. The country is now late afternoon before going to the polls. The surveys indicate two central elements: a difference in votes in favor of the Correismo candidate and a high percentage of blank and invalid votes.

This second element seems decisive. The usual null and blank vote rate is generally around 10 and 12 percent in Ecuador. This time, however, the poll count shows up to a maximum of 36, an element that makes the election forecast unstable. Will these votes remain null and void? Will they go to one of the two candidates in greater proportion? These are some of the main questions.

This configuration indicates that a high percentage, around nearly a third of the electorate, could vote on the same Sunday at the polls. The existence of this situation is due to several factors, such as, for example, the uncertainty on the destination of the votes which in the first round Yaku perez, third and Xavier Hervas, bedroom. Another element is the way in which the decision of the main indigenous movement, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie) to maintain the call for an “ideological null” vote, a position which, however, is not homogeneous, due to the fact that the president of La Conaie, Jaime Vargas, called publicly to vote for Arauz.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that all parts of the electoral process are ready for deployment on Sunday, along with the necessary biosecurity measures, on a day that will begin at seven in the morning and end at five in the afternoon. Ten missions and eleven groups of international observers are already in the country, such as the Organization of American States, Parlasur, the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts, the Inter-American Union of Electoral Organizations, the European Union delegation, the Progressive International or the Puebla Group.

The CNE announced, at the end of its plenary session on Friday, that a quick count will not take place on Sunday, unlike what happened in the first round. The examination and processing time will, according to information from the electoral authority, be less than the first round, in which 16 candidates participated, and the Electoral system for the transmission of reports and results, which means that “from the moment when the first data resulting from the monitoring of the polling stations are obtained, they will be available online by the political organizations and will have probative force”. The first few minutes, as shown Diana Atamaint, president of the CNE, will go online around seven in the afternoon.

Everything is thus organized for a second round which will take place under the watchful eye of many national and international actors, as part of an electoral process during which several complaints of irregularities as soon as the candidacies are registered, in particular that of Arauz. Threats to the race remain, as expressed by Union for Hope the day Thursday:

“Ecuador demands a democratic and transparent electoral process guaranteeing respect for the popular will (…) those of us who are part of the Unes alliance are alerting the international community and the general public to possible interference that endangers the normal development of elections. April 11 next “.

One of the main priorities of the competition in Ecuador is that it will bring into play two diametrically different models. On the one hand, Lasso, coming from bank of guayaquil – one of the most important in the country – represents financial capital at the central level with a proposal for neoliberal deepening, in continuity with the project that the current government has carried out. The Correismo indicates that it had co-governed with Lenin Moreno, both on the economic and political question, with its approval, for example, of the repression of the indigenous and popular uprising that took place in October 2019, where eleven demonstrators were killed and several mutilated.

In matters of foreign policy, Lasso’s model, like that of all Latin American rights, represents alignment with the American foreign agenda, with the boycott of the processes of continental integration independent of Washington, the subordination in matters of security and defense, recognition of the “interim president” Juan Guaidó in Venezuela, and the pressure not to establish greater contacts with China, especially in terms of communication and technology.

On the other hand, Arauz was presented as the renewed continuation of the citizen revolution, the project carried by Rafael Correa, who was from 2007 to 2017 in the presidency and was later betrayed and persecuted by the Moreno government. Arauz, an economist by training, presented a progressive proposal, emphasizing the health dimension, employment, internal production, debt relief for families, traders, small businesses, one of the challenges central to Ecuadorian society.

Regarding his external agenda, the candidate of the citizen revolution underlined the need to (re) arm the instruments of regional integration, such as Unasur and Celac, and has already taken political steps with several Latin American personalities, such as Evo Morales, Alberto Fernández and Pepe Mujica. His victory, if it occurs, would mean the rise of a fourth progressive government in four years in Latin America, following the victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico in 2018, Fernández in 2019, and Luis Arce in Bolivia last year.

Sunday’s election will therefore be a central point in the configuration of the map of regional forces in a situation of dispute between right-wing and progressive governments. Ecuador’s contest will run concurrently with Peru’s first presidential round, and a look at the 2022 presidential elections in Brazil, with the horizon fixed on the reconstruction of a continental block in times of geopolitical confrontations.