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The correista candidate prevails in the Ecuador elections, but there will be a second round

2021-02-08T13:53:10.441Z


Arauz won with just over 32% of the support ahead of conservative Guillermo Lasso and indigenous leader Yaku Pérez, according to provisional data. The difference in votes between the two is so narrow that it will be necessary to count 100% of the votes to see who will contest the second round in April.


The correista candidate Andrés Arauz

won the presidential elections in Ecuador

held this Sunday with just over 32% of the valid votes, when less than 3% of the minutes remained to be scrutinized, according to official data.



The result

has not been a surprise in Ecuador

, where polls before the elections and exit polls indicated a difference of up to 15 percentage points over the second candidate.

The identity of the second candidate must be clarified in the next few days as there is a technical tie in the official result between the center-right Guillermo Lasso, who started as a favorite to go to the second round, and the indigenous environmentalist candidate Yaku Pérez.

Both have obtained a provisional result that exceeds 19% and is only separated by a margin of a few tenths. 

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They offer $ 50,000 to whoever gives information]

It is a very small number of votes to decide who has been in second position and will go to a second round, since the final count will still take a few days and the vote of the diaspora would still be counted.



Slightly more than 410,000 Ecuadorians living abroad were summoned to vote in these elections

, in which the country elected president and vice president, 137 members of the National Assembly and five of the Andean Parliament.

Guillermo Lasso, presidential candidate of the Creando Oportunidades or CREO party, shows his ballot during the presidential and legislative elections in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on Sunday, February 7, 2021.AP Photo / Angel Dejesus


As a result of the tie, Pérez has questioned the results in Guayaquil this morning and asked for a new count.



"We have participated in this electoral process demanding transparency, but despite the fact that the quick count of the CNE (National Electoral Council) gave us for second place, they are approaching and it seems that the intention is to reverse us and leave us in third place," he said in a statements at the headquarters of the movement he leads, Pachakutik, in Quito.



Pérez called on his followers and voters to "be vigilant" and to mobilize

so that "your will is not defrauded, that your will is respected," suggesting that the electoral body or some political power seek to modify the results.



The conservative candidate, who initially started as the favorite to go to a second round behind Arauz, traditionally has a loyal vote in his city, Guayaquil, although it is unknown if that predicament would have been modified when the new political factor came into play representing Pérez.

A woman votes during the general elections in Cangahua, Ecuador, on Sunday, February 7, 2021.AP Photo / Dolores Ochoa

Ecuadorian law requires a second round when the winner does not obtain an absolute majority or at least 40% of the valid votes with a difference of 10 points over the second candidate.The fragmentation of the vote has been due to the unprecedented number of candidates that have been presented to the elections on Sunday, 16 presidential formulas. Xavier Hervás, of the Democratic Left, is positioned in fourth place, with 16.01% of the votes. The other twelve candidates, all of them from the beginning with no real possibility of passing in the second round, the scrutiny is distributed: Pedro José Freile, 2.15%;

Isidro Romero, 1.82%;

former president Lucio Gutierrez, 1.76%;

Gerson Almeida, 1.69%;

and the only aspiring woman, Ximena Peña, 1.53%.

A woman votes in Cangahua, Ecuador, on Sunday, February 7, 2021.AP Photo / Dolores Ochoa

Seven other candidates have obtained less than 1% of the scrutiny. 

In all, 16 candidates are vying to succeed Lenin Moreno, a protégé who later became a rival to Rafael Correa, who ruled Ecuador for a decade and continues to gravitate despite a corruption conviction that prevented him from seeking the vice presidency this year.

During the election day, long lines of citizens were registered around the polling places, especially in large cities, sometimes with hours of waiting, before the voters wearing masks managed to vote in compliance with social distancing and sanitary regulations established by the authorities to avoid the accumulation of voters within the polling places.

Ramiro Loza, 37, told the AP news agency: "I am indifferent who wins the elections,

we are used to thinking that the messiah comes to solve our lives and no candidate solves anything for me

. During the quarantine my income is They reduced 80% and the politicians did not feed me. I am the one who gets up to make my projects come true. "

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Arauz could not cast his vote in Quito because he was registered to do so in Mexico, where he lived until shortly before his nomination, and he did not change his electoral address.

On Sunday he chose to accompany his grandmother Flora Galarza to vote in a center installed in the north of the capital.

The winner will assume the reins of the country on May 24

.

It will have to work to lift the oil-producing nation out of a deepening economic crisis that has been exacerbated by the production and commercial paralysis caused by the pandemic.

The country of 17 million people had recorded more than 257,000 cases and more than 15,000 deaths from COVID-19 as of Friday, according to data from NBC News, Telemundo's sister network.

With information from EFE and AP.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2021-02-08

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