This Sunday's presidential elections in Ecuador stage, in essence, a battle between two models already known in the Andean country and to a large extent throughout Latin America.
On the one hand, the left heir to former President Rafael Correa, represented by Andrés Arauz, who seeks to regain power.
In front, Guillermo Lasso, a conservative and economically liberal politician, who tries for the third time to reach the Carondelet Palace.
Although the polls indicate that the vote will not be resolved in the first round and these two candidates will have to meet again in a tiebreaker in April, the demobilization and fragmentation of the vote, with 16 candidates on the ballot, add uncertainty to the day.
Yaku Pérez, an indigenous leader, or businessman Xavier Hervas, who increased his popularity thanks to social networks, can detract from the favorites.
Andres Arauz
Arauz ended the electoral campaign assuring that on Sunday "the Citizen Revolution 2.0 arrives."
In short, the new version of the movement founded by Correa and that, in the wake of the projects framed in the so-called socialism of the 21st century, kept him in the presidency for a decade, between 2007 and 2017. The former president also won the last elections Although finally his candidate, Lenín Moreno, broke with him and embarked on a radically different path.
Arauz is a young politician, this Saturday he turns 36, and he has become a hope of the left not only in Latin America but also in Europe.
Progressive platforms and leaders, led by the Puebla Group, have turned their heads with their candidacy and hope that this economist, who was Minister of Knowledge and Human Talent in Correa's last stage, will repeat the feat of Luis Arce, which in October, against the prognoses of the polls, returned power to the Movement for Socialism of Evo Morales without the need to hold a second round.
Like his mentor, he was trained in the United States and before running for this election he lived in Mexico, where he studied for a doctorate.
The proposal for his candidacy, Union for Hope (UNES), includes "recovering free and high-quality education" "resuming true social justice" in health policy, strengthening economic sovereignty and promoting research and technology.
Broadly speaking, Arauz remains faithful to the postulates of the Citizen Revolution, which applied recipes for an expansive economy and multiplied investments in infrastructure.
If he does win the election, however, he will have to deal with Moreno's inheritance.
The next president will have a certain margin in the first stage, since the commitments made by the current government contemplate five years of grace.
However, the renegotiation of sovereign bond debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was subject to a series of structural reforms aimed at reducing public spending.
That philosophy collides with Arauz's plans, which, for example, promised $ 1,000 to one million families to promote entrepreneurship and try to avoid the worsening economic crisis in the midst of a pandemic.
The leftist aspirant, according to his own presentation, defines himself "as a post-Keynesian, social and solidarity economist."
He has received the support of former Ibero-American presidents such as the Uruguayan José Mujica, the Spanish José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Bolivian Evo Morales, the Colombian Ernesto Samper, the current Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, and has the support of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) of the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
"Beyond Sunday's results, we have triumphed," Correa said at the closing of the campaign, rejecting what he describes as "persecution" against him and against the political group that represents him today.
The vote now represents the opportunity for Correísmo to leave the term of Lenín Moreno in a parenthesis and give another oxygen balloon to the Latin American left.
Both Arauz and his main adversary did not attend EL PAÍS in the final stretch of the campaign.
Guillermo Lasso
Lasso is on his third attempt to come to power in Ecuador.
He is the aspiring president of Ecuador who represents the frontal antagonism to the economic model of socialism of the XXI century and is sold as the candidate for change and employment.
He claims to know how jobs are created, due to his experience as an entrepreneur at Banco de Guayaquil, one of the three largest in the country.
And it promises to recover two million jobs for Ecuadorians.
The leader of the CREO movement, conservative and economically liberal, is committed to lowering taxes to boost the national economy but without radical adjustments in public spending.
His promises are not new.
In the 2013 elections, he signed before a notary the list of taxes and fees that would come out of the collection schedule if he became president.
In this campaign, that proposal was notarized again.
His political evolution has been accompanied by that of Correa and Correísmo.
In his first presidential nomination, Correa swept 57% in a single round.
The second time, with Lenín Moreno as his successor, Lasso reached the second round but a close vote count that lasted three days left him out by just over two percentage points.
Moreno won with 51.16% of the votes and he obtained 48.84%.
“Correísmo comes from the top down.
At the time, it reached 70% of voting intention, it dropped to 50%, it reached 40% and now it is bordering 20%.
Elections are not won in polls.
They are won on Election Day.
I already have the experience of two ”, he predicted in an interview.
This time, unlike the last electoral contest, he allied himself from the beginning with the main rival of Correísmo, the Christian Social mayor who ruled 20 years in Guayaquil, Jaime Nebot, and signed an alliance for the presidency that, however, he maintains for separate rope plans in assembly.
The CREO movement and the Christian Social Party run with a single candidate for Carondelet, but they will remain as two blocks in the Legislative Assembly that, in fact, in the last four years, have voted at opposite poles on issues as transcendental as the decriminalization of abortion for rape.
Lasso, 65, has a hard core of followers, who guarantee him at least 20% in voting intention according to the latest polls, but also detractors.
The shadow of the bank holiday has risen with each election campaign.
That aspect is precisely what their opponents have always tried to take advantage of.
How will Ecuador, a country that saw millions of compatriots emigrate to Spain and Italy due to the fraudulent fall from grace of the banking system, freezing and fading the savings of its clients, a president's banker?
Lasso was Minister of Economy for a month under the Jamil Mahuad government, months after he ordered to freeze those resources to prevent a massive flight of capital, but the commission created by Correa to investigate the 1999 financial crisis concluded that neither the Bank of Guayaquil, of which Lasso was president in 1989, not even Guillermo Lasso himself benefited from the harshest episode in recent Ecuadorian history.
Despite the constant accusations, in the 10 years of Correa's administration he could never be directly linked.
With an affable you to you treatment and at the same time an apathetic public image, it is his most familiar facet that shows a Guillermo Lasso with conservative values and humble origins.
By his own account, he began to work at age 14 to contribute to the household as the youngest of 11 siblings.
Now, with a wealthy life, his wife and three older children characterize the idyllic model of the Guayaquil business elite.
Even so, he has had to spend "a lot of money" in his two previous campaigns to gain closeness to the people by walking the streets and hearing first-hand the needs of rural areas, although the pandemic has led him to the networks in this third campaign social.
He appeared toasting a beer to show that he too leads a normal life.
However, he is the presidential candidate who pays the most taxes -almost 700,000 dollars in Income Tax in 2019 and 4.5 million dollars in the last five years-, but also the one who preaches about the total transparency that senior citizens should have. State offices.
He lives in a house in Samborondón, one of the areas with the highest capital gains in Guayaquil, has a newly remodeled second home on the beach and gets around in an armored Toyota Land Cruiser.