Ecuador decided and the result showed a worrying trend for current President Guillermo Lasso. According to last Sunday’s consultation (5), the constitutional referendum, which proposed eight amendments and was a flag of the president, may be denied by the population, according to preliminary results. While in the regional elections, with more than 90% of the votes counted, the Citizen Revolution (RC) – former president Rafael Correa’s party – emerged victorious in Quito, Guayas and Manabí, the country’s largest cities.
In the national capital, Pabel Muñoz (RC) was elected mayor with 25.20% of the votes and the runner-up, Jorge Yunda, has already conceded defeat with 99.4% of the counting completed. “These elections are a great start, now we are going to continue working with the joy of knowing that what we do with our hearts, with support, we will make Quito reborn”, published Muñoz.
In Cuenca, Cristian Eduardo Zamora Matute, from the Democratic Left, was elected with less than a 1% advantage over the runner-up, Pedro Palacios.
In Guayaquil, the country’s most populous city, Aquiles Álvarez Henríques (RC) won 39% of the vote against 30% for Cynthia Viteri, of the Christian Social Party (PSC), who was seeking re-election. One of Álvarez’s main proposals is a new security plan for the capital of Guayas, which is considered one of the 50 most dangerous in the world.
In the province of Guayas, Marcela Aguinaga, from the Citizen Revolution, emerged with more than 34% of the votes, displacing 31 years of PSC hegemony in the region.
The Citizens’ Revolution also managed to re-elect Paola Pabón as governor of the province of Pichincha, where Quito is located. “I thank Pichincha for the support and affection”, wrote Paola in her networks. Correa’s party will also govern the province of Azuay.
The first stage of vote counting in Ecuador is done by the polling station / CNE Ecuador
In this way, Rafael Correa’s party will govern Ecuador’s largest cities and provinces two years before the general elections, scheduled for 2025.
“Now a new scenario opens for the Citizens’ Revolution, which is unprecedented in history, which is the expectation of changes at the regional level. Now they need to carry out these proposals, to have results, to reach 2025, not only with the report of the past at a national level, but with an accumulation of local policies that show that they are coming in full force”, he says in an interview with Brazil in fact the Ecuadorian political consultant Jacobo García.
The verification of the constitutional plebiscite is slower. With just 34% of the count completed, the “no” vote has so far won all eight questions put to voters by a wide margin. The plebiscite was proposed by President Guillermo Lasso, in September last year, to amend the Constitution approved in 2007 in articles related to security, citizen participation and the environment.
For the political consultant, Jacobo García, the combination of the plebiscite with the regional elections would be a kind of “smokescreen” for the Lasso government to hide its unpopularity in the interior of the country. However, apparently, the maneuver did not work.
“More than a blow to its popularity, I believe that this government is dead. There were months of campaign for this plebiscite. They left aside the local elections and stopped attending to other national matters and the people gave them a very resounding ‘no'” , says Garcia.
Last Sunday (5), around 13.45 million Ecuadorians were summoned to elect their new mayors and governors, members of the Citizen Participation and Social Control Council, and to define whether they intended to amend the Constitution in eight points. Voting is compulsory for all people between the ages of 18 and 65 and turnout was 80% of the electorate, according to Ecuador’s National Electoral Council.
Editing: Thales Schmidt
