Socialist leader nears power after tapping Ecuador voter anger

Ecuador’s main socialist party has its best shot of taking power in the Andean nation in nearly a decade. Presidential candidate Luisa González is leading the charge, backed by an experienced political machine and fueled by voter anger.

González, 47, forced a runoff in Sunday’s election, defying polls to finish neck-and-neck with President Daniel Noboa, 37. A shrinking economy, rampant gang activity and a recent bout of disruptive blackouts under Noboa have been enough to persuade voters to give González and her party Citizen Revolution another look.

The deciding vote on April 13 will be a rematch between the U.S.-educated son of a wealthy banana exporter and a protege of former President Rafael Correa vying to become the country’s first elected female president. Noboa defeated her in a 2023 snap election brought on by a political crisis. Once again, her association with the polarizing Correa will be her biggest asset with some voters and her biggest weakness with others.

Proximity to the popular but self-exiled former president “is what motivated the vote the most,” said Ana Marcela Paredes, political scientist at Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales in the capital Quito.

Some polls had projected Noboa to avoid a runoff by winning more than 50% of the vote, excluding voided ballots. Not only did he fall short, with an estimated 48%, but González was just behind him, with roughly 47%. Citizen Revolution was headed toward the second-largest number of seats in the legislature, with potential to obtain a majority through alliances with smaller parties.

Noboa is still the favorite, “but that is subject to multiple risks over the coming two months,” said political scientist Sebastian Hurtado, head of consultancy Profitas in Quito.

Correa was part of a wave of leftist leaders known as the Pink Tide who dominated Latin American politics during the 2000s. He was close to Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and defaulted on Ecuador’s debt in 2008.

The nation’s dollar bonds plunged the most in more than two years on Monday as investors digested the prospect that Correa’s movement may soon be back in charge. A win would mark a pivot away from market-centric policies prevalent in Ecuador since 2018 at a time several nations in the hemisphere, including the U.S., have elected politicians on the right.

In Sunday’s vote, González showed strength in crime-hit coastal provinces, a sign of frustration with Noboa’s attempts to battle drug gangs in Ecuador, where violent deaths remain among the highest in Latin America.

While González has criticized his anticrime strategy as “improvised,” she’s outlined a similar approach: using the military to support police operations, employing technology including drones and artificial intelligence, combating illegal mining, fighting money laundering and recovering state control over jails used in the past as drug lords’ headquarters.

Noboa targeted the youth vote through social media, while González used tried-and-true tactics to build support, Paredes said.

“Citizen Revolution has created grassroots bases and shown empathy above all with older generations,” she said.

González said that she would be willing to negotiate with other political organizations to win their backing for the runoff vote. Among the rival candidates she’ll be courting is third-place, hard-left Indigenous leader Leonidas Iza. “There are more points that we’re agreed on than those that separate us,” she said in a television interview with Teleamazonas Monday.

Correa, the most influential leader in Ecuador’s recent history, presided over a strong economy for much of his 2007-2017 presidency amid high oil prices, but became increasingly authoritarian and was eventually convicted in absentia on corruption charges. He now lives in Belgium and would be jailed if he returned to Ecuador. González denies that she would pardon him if she were president.

Like Correa, González is a socialist with conservative social values. She has spoken out against abortion, including for victims of rape. She once told an evangelical church congregation that she would sooner lose an election than not make God part of her campaign.

(Translation: The Constitutional Court of Ecuador decriminalized abortion for victims of rape, and it’s essential to take up this matter in the Ecuadorian Assembly. I am voting against a proposal that doesn’t defend life, takes away parental authority and lets the rapist go free.)

But on matters of economics and international relations, she’s aligned with other Latin American leftists. She has refused to condemn Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, another Correa ally. And she’s called for greater wealth redistribution, more investment in public works programs and a stronger welfare state. If she wins, she’s likely to clash with the International Monetary Fund, which reached a $4.4 billion deal with Ecuador last year.

“There’s not a single country in the world that has followed the policies of the IMF and been successful,” she said. “All the countries that have followed the policies of the IMF have ended up in total failure, with an increase in poverty and economic contraction, with the grave social consequences that this causes.”

González says she is against the most recent increase in the value-added tax by Noboa that helped to seal the IMF deal last year. Instead, she wants to renegotiate terms to reduce Ecuador’s debt to the fund by $1 billion, increase a tax on U.S. dollar transfers outside the country, and raise duties on goods deemed luxuries.

According to a dramatized biography with soft piano music released by her campaign, González was born in Quito but raised in a rural area in Manabí, a province on Ecuador’s coast. She held several positions in Correa’s government, including working as his secretary, and also as secretary of the public administration.

Her first elected office was that of a lawmaker in the 2021 National Assembly, where her term was cut short when President Guillermo Lasso dissolved the congress in 2023.

Her running mate this time, Diego Borja, was central bank president under Correa, and her economic agenda is reminiscent of the former president’s. Borja was a key figure in the dismantling of central bank independence under Correa, allowing direct lending to the finance ministry.

She is friendly toward oil drilling, and in 2023 opposed a referendum that ordered the shutdown of a large oil field inside an Amazon rainforest national park. She also wants to raise royalties on Ecuador’s successful fledgling mining industry negotiated under Correa.

A González win could also signify a thawing of relations with Mexico. Diplomatic ties have been severed since April 2024 after Noboa ordered a raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest Jorge Glas, who was vice president under Correa. The countries have also failed to resuscitate talks on a free-trade deal, and Noboa ordered a 27% tariff on Mexican goods last week.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum hailed González’s performance in her daily news conference Monday.

“Hopefully in Ecuador soon they’ll shout ‘presidenta’ with an ‘a,’” she said, using the Spanish word for a female president, “and relations can be reestablished with Mexico.”