Ecuador puts the brakes on Bolivarian Correismo

Daniel Noboa, leader of Acción Democrática Nacional (ADN), faced this second electoral round at the head of the most insecure country on the American continent, with the exception of Haiti, which is taking giant steps towards becoming an unrecoverable narco-state. With Ecuadorian ports having become the main exit point for the huge quantity of drugs produced in neighbouring Peru, Colombia and Bolivia, and with the Maduro regime in Venezuela supervising from a distance, the country faces the greatest challenge to its very survival, with the evident risk of falling into the clutches of narco-terrorism and becoming a failed state. 

At 37 years of age, Daniel Noboa rightly embodies the hope that the country, once the most peaceful and calm in America, will not end up in such a tragic fate, especially after receiving more than 55% of the support of Ecuadorians. A landslide victory, then, and an indisputable one too in the opinion of the international observers, those who were prevented by Maduro and his henchmen from verifying their own elections before hiding the electoral records and proclaiming their supposed victory in the last presidential elections, also won in a landslide by the candidate Edmundo González.

As was also to be expected, in addition to the self-proclaimed Venezuelan president, his opponent, Luisa González, leader of the Citizens' Revolution (RC), does not recognise Noboa's victory either. She is remotely controlled by her 'boss', Rafael Correa, from Belgium, the country where, like the Catalan coup leader Puigdemont, she has taken refuge to escape justice. Both Correa and Luisa González have used the same disqualifications as Maduro to avoid recognising the winner of the elections. This is yet more proof of the coordination of the so-called Grupo de Puebla, an invention of Castro's Cuba to regain power by any means in the countries from which it was evicted, and not to let go of it under any circumstances once it has been reconquered.

Noboa, who makes no secret of his sympathies for the iron fist installed in El Salvador by its president Nayib Bukele, has already copied some of his measures in the year and a half he has occupied the Presidency of Ecuador to complete the mandate of the resigned Guillermo Lasso: he declared a state of emergency, militarised the country and tried to expand the powers of the Executive. Measures that have earned him accusations of disregarding constitutional guarantees of human rights and embarking on a totalitarian drift. But, unlike his admired Bukele, who has turned El Salvador into ‘the safest country in America’ - Donald Trump dixit - Ecuador is still mired in a spiral of violence that claims victims at the rate of one murder every hour.

Noboa's supporters now fear that the defeated candidate, encouraged both by her mentor, Rafael Correa, and by her fellow Castroists and Bolivarians, will take to the streets and make it impossible to implement a government programme to rebuild the country. If this happens, and pessimism that it will spread to every corner of Ecuador, Noboa will face the dilemma of increasing repression even further. The Bolivarian Correísmo does not seem willing to allow Noboa to ensure that the four years for which he has been elected are peaceful and the country can recover. 

Also, like Bukele, the re-elected president of Ecuador a priori enjoys the sympathies of the current US administration. However, with the glaring exceptions of wanting to regain control of the Panama Canal, prevent Latin American immigration and take over Greenland, it is still not clear what policy Trump is going to apply south of the Rio Grande, given that dictators, however illegitimate they may be or appear to be, do not make the US president retch.