Ecuador heads to the polls for presidential election led by millionaire president and leftist lawyer
Ecuador’s presidential election is shaping up to be a repeat of the 2023 race when voters chose a conservative young millionaire over the leftist protégé of the country’s most influential president this century
By REGINA GARCIA CANO Associated Press
February 9, 2025, 1:07 AM
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador -- GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuador’s presidential election Sunday is shaping up to be a repeat of the 2023 race, when voters chose a conservative young millionaire over the leftist protégé of the country’s most influential president this century.
President Daniel Noboa and Luis González are the clear front-runners among the pool of 16 candidates. All promised voters to reduce the widespread crime that pushed their lives into an unnerving new normal four years ago.
The spike in violence across the South American country is tied to the trafficking of cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia and Peru. So many voters have become crime victims that their personal and collective losses will be a determining factor in deciding whether a third president in four years can turn Ecuador around or if Noboa deserves more time in office.
Voting is mandatory in Ecuador. More than 13.7 million people are eligible to vote. On Thursday, thousands of inmates who await sentencing cast ballots at voting centers set up in more than 40 prisons.
To win outright, a candidate needs 50% of the vote or at least 40% with a 10-point lead over the closest opponent. If needed, a runoff election would take place on April 13.
More:
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ecuador-heads-polls-presidential-election-led-millionaire-president-118618050
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His father ran for the Presidency multiple times and always lost. Here's an article published in 2002 in the NY Times, written when the father was giving it his last attempt. Clearly the son was raised by a slaver, and a grifter of the highest magnitude:
In Ecuador's Banana Fields, Child Labor Is Key to Profits
By Juan Forero
July 13, 2002
At Los Álamos plantation, it would appear that no expense was spared to produce the Bonita brand Cavendish bananas sold in the United States.
The modern 3,000-acre hacienda in this steamy corner of Ecuador, one of the most efficient in Latin America, employs some 1,300 workers to tend banana plants fed by a state-of-the-art irrigation system.
The owner is Álvaro Noboa, Ecuador's richest man and a worldly bon vivant. He has become the leading candidate for president with the help of a slick marketing campaign that has cast him as a populist friend of the poor. ''I love the workers at Los Álamos,'' Mr. Noboa told local reporters in May, when he announced his candidacy.
But in interviews, a dozen children and many adults spoke of child laborers at Los Álamos, among them a spindly-armed 10-year-old, Esteban Menéndez. ''I come here after school and I work here all day,'' Esteban said. ''I have to work to help my father, to help him make money.''
More:
https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/13/world/in-ecuador-s-banana-fields-child-labor-is-key-to-profits.html
Or:
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/13/world/in-ecuador-s-banana-fields-child-labor-is-key-to-profits.html
(Please consider reading this article. Most people in the US don't seem to have any idea this hideous behavior toward the poor majorities has been going on almost unchanged while the workers and their children toil their entire lives away, and the parents die early, and everyone suffers.)
Álvaro, celebrating his son, Daniel.
Álvaro, creeping out a doggie.