Political Instability In Ecuador

A Clenched Fist Ecuador When Daniel Noboa took over the presidency of Ecuador in November 2023, there was hope that the young outsider could turn the country, bruised and battered by criminal gangs, around. Now almost 15 months later, polls show that Ecuadorans are quickly running out of patience with the young heir to a banana fortune: He may not win the first round of elections on Feb. 9 outright and may have to compete in a run-off election in April. For most of last year, Noboa was on track to easily win reelection, with polls showing him as a frontrunner on approval ratings topping 50 percent. Regular citizens initially saw Noboa as “a president who is making decisions,” under challenging circumstances, Quito-based analyst Max Donoso-Muller told Americas Quarterly. That mano dura (iron fist) stance on security was helping boost his popularity, it added. Now, however, escalating violence, frequent blackouts, and continuing economic malaise are threatening to derail his candidacy. Elected last year to complete the term of former President Guillermo Lasso, who called a snap election after facing mounting opposition, charges of corruption, and impeachment, Noboa won the election on a wave of optimism. Ecuador was long one of South America’s most peaceful countries, but in recent years it has been rocked by a wave of violence from organized crime gangs operating in neighboring Colombia and Peru, using it as a transit hub to the Pacific Ocean to ship cocaine to the world. By 2023, the country’s homicide rate had increased to 40 deaths per 100,000 people, one of the highest in the region. When he entered office, Ecuadorians, weary of the country’s near-takeover by gangs, held out hope that the outsider would be able to challenge the political elite and find new ways to tackle the country’s security situation, energy crisis, and sluggish economy. Since then, he has taken a tough-on-crime approach, noted World Politics Review, launching a war against gangs by engaging the military to support police and correction officers on the streets and in prisons, increasing prison sentences, and arresting thousands of suspected gang members. When voters were asked if they supported such measures in spite of worries over human rights in a referendum last year, they overwhelmingly answered “yes.” “We can’t live in fear of leaving our homes,” Leonor Sandoval, a 39-year-old homemaker, told the Associated Press. In spite of his measures, it’s spiraling crime that poses the most significant threat to Noboa’s reelection. While homicides have decreased marginally since he became president, the rate is still higher than in 2022. Meanwhile, Ecuador is grappling with a severe drought that has drastically reduced hydroelectric power generation. In some parts of the country, residents have cuts lasting up to 14 hours a day. “There shouldn’t be power cuts,” Brandon Samueza, who lost his job at a factory after blackouts reduced his employer’s earnings significantly, told Al Jazeera. “A government should be prepared … the fact that they have not done anything to adjust speaks badly of the government.” Part of the political blowback on Noboa is due to his championing of an electricity reform law last year that did nothing to alleviate the problem, analysts said. And in a country still struggling to recover from the pandemic, the situation is severely harming companies and the economy. Meanwhile, other candidates have been gaining in the polls. Although there are 15 other candidates on the ballot, polls suggest Noboa will face off against former assemblywoman Luisa González of the Citizen Revolution Movement, a leftist party led by popular, self-exiled former President Rafael Correa, who was convicted of corruption, a charge he decries as political. Noboa defeated González in 2023’s runoff election with 52 percent of the vote to her 48 percent. González was briefly running ahead of Noboa last fall but he’s the frontrunner again – for now. Still, analysts say that the election is hard to predict because of the gangs. “I think that violence will intensify because drug trafficking gangs, which did particularly well during Correa’s government, will intensify their actions so that the population thinks that Noboa failed in his attempt to control them and opts for the Correa candidate,” Walter Spurrier of the Guayaquil-based consultancy Grupo Spurrier told Bnamericas. He added that Noboa made a mistake by sparking hope that the war on the gangs would be short-lived: “The fight is a long one.” Share this story