Biodun.BBC: Rafael Correa

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Ecuador: Conservative asks for recount as leftist claims victory

Mon Apr 3, 2017 | 02H:32 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Renee Celeste and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters, Quito

Leftist government candidate Lenin Moreno claimed victory in Ecuador's presidential election on Sunday but the right-wing challenger disputed the result and asked for a recount, setting the stage for potential protests in the historically turbulent Andean nation.

Moreno had 51.06 percent of the votes compared to conservative candidate Guillermo Lasso's 48.94 percent, according to the country's electoral council, with 93.5 percent of votes counted. The electoral council had not declared a winner.

"They've toyed with popular will," former banker Lasso told Ecuadorean television on Sunday night, asking for a recount and saying he was the real winner of the vote.

He cited the first round of the election in February, when final results took days to come out and his supporters massed in front of the electoral council to guard against what they said were fraud attempts.

Dozens of Lasso supporters in his coastal hometown of Guayaquil were marching on the electoral council office there on Sunday night, shouting, "No to fraud, yes to democracy!" according to a Reuters witness.

But Moreno, a paraplegic former vice-president who has promised to boost social welfare, was already celebrating a victory that would extend a decade of leftist rule.

"From now on, let's work for the country! All of us!" Moreno told cheering supporters in mountainous capital Quito.

A Lasso defeat would come as a relief for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whom he had promised to remove from the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

It would also buck a trend in South America, where right-leaning governments have come to power in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru recently as a commodities boom ended and corruption accusations grew.

"The revolution has triumphed again in Ecuador," outgoing President Rafael Correa said on Twitter. "The right has lost, despite its millions and its media."

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Ecuador decides its future in runoff, and maybe Assange's

02 April 2017 - 04H00 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Enrique Krause and Biodun Iginla, France24, QUITO

QUITO -

Ecuador votes Sunday in a presidential runoff to turn the page on a decade under radical economist Rafael Correa and decide whether the country will follow Latin America's recent shift to the right.

The election could also decide the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up at the country's London embassy since 2012.

Correa presided over an economic boom that has recently gone bust in the South American oil producer. With voters torn between continuity and change, the race remains too close to call.

The runoff pits the socialist president's designated heir, Lenin Moreno, against conservative ex-banker Guillermo Lasso.

Lasso finished second in the first-round vote last month, with 28 percent to Moreno's 39 percent. But polls give him a slight edge heading into the runoff, with between 52.1 percent and 57.6 percent of the vote.

The race is also a barometer of the political climate in Latin America, where more than a decade of leftist dominance has been waning.

Argentina, Brazil and Peru have all shifted to the right in recent months, as the region has sunk into recession and leftist leaders have been tarnished by a string of corruption scandals.

- What kind of change? -

Boosted by high prices for its oil exports, Ecuador registered solid economic growth of 4.4 percent per year on average during the first eight years of Correa's presidency, before tipping into recession in mid-2015.

Correa won loyal fans among the poor with generous social benefits that helped reduce the poverty rate from 36.7 percent to 23.3 percent in this country of 16 million people.

But he has also faced accusations of corruption and squandering the windfall of the oil boom.

Political analyst Napoleon Saltos of the Central University of Ecuador said the election would be played out between "the vote against the government and the fear among certain parts of the population that they will lose what they gained over the past 10 years."

Lasso, 61, appears to have gained the edge by uniting the opposition vote behind his promises to end tax-and-spend policies and create a million jobs.

But Moreno, 64, has sought to co-opt the buzzword of "change" for himself.

"We're heading for a change, yes, but a positive change, not a negative change, a change toward the past," he told us at France24 Wednesday.

- Assange fate at stake -

In another of the race's hot debates, Lasso has threatened to revoke the political asylum Ecuador has granted its most famous guest, Assange.

Correa, an outspoken critic of the United States, let Assange stay at the embassy to avoid arrest and extradition to Sweden over a rape allegation.

The 45-year-old Australian, who denies the accusation, says he fears Sweden would send him to the United States to face trial for leaking hundreds of thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents in 2010.

His case has returned to the spotlight since WikiLeaks was accused of meddling in the US election last year by releasing a damaging trove of hacked emails from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign and her Democratic party.