The candidates of former president Rafael Correa prevail in the municipal elections of Ecuador

The prefect of Pichincha, Paola Pabón, together with the candidate for mayor of Quito, Pabel Muñoz, at the closing of the campaign. José Jácome (EFE)

The scrutiny of local elections in Ecuador leaves some unexpected results.

The candidates of the Citizen Revolution party, the movement of former President Rafael Correa, prevail in the two main cities of the country, Quito and Guayaquil.

With 50% of the minutes scrutinized, almost 25% of the people of Quito have given their support to Pabel Muñoz, leaving Jorge Yunda behind by three points, who was emerging as the favorite.

What happens in Guayaquil is a milestone.

With 51% of the votes, the correísta candidate, Aquiles Álvarez, is on his way to breaking with the dynasty of 30 years in power of the Social Christian Party in the main economic city of the country by having an advantage of 39.4% of the votes.

Cynthia Viteri, who was seeking re-election, trails behind by 30.15%.

"We are 11 points ahead of Viteri, who until today was mayor of Guayaquil," Alvárez announced.

“We have validated with our electoral control, the trend that we see in the Electoral Council count is already irreversible.

We have won the mayoralty of my city”, announced the candidate of the Citizen Revolution.

The Christian Social Party has opted for silence.

To these results would also be added those of prefects (province governors) to whom correísmo also has an advantage,

The results of the referendum called by President Guillermo Lasso also suffered an unexpected setback.

Although the percentage of scrutiny advances slowly, with 2% the option of no in the eight questions increases.

What forced the president to suspend an event in Quito to which he had summoned supporters in which he hoped to pronounce himself to give a resounding victory for the Yes, as reflected by the unofficial data from the exit polls.

The government preferred to be cautious and wait for official data from the Electoral Council.

If that is the trend, Lasso would have a complex scenario to govern the next two years.

Election day in Ecuador began at seven in the morning with a speech by the main authorities condemning the third assassination of a candidate, on the night of February 4.

This is Omar Menéndez, candidate for mayor of Puerto López, a small town in the province of Manabí on the Ecuadorian coast.

With this, there would be 15 violent attacks on politicians since the registration of candidacies, in the most violent elections ever recorded in the South American country, something that was also repudiated by the members of the OAS observers who participated in the elections.

“The OAS has carried out 22 electoral observation missions in Ecuador.

This is the 23rd and it is the first time that this fact, so adverse and negative for democracy, that there are expressions of violence with political motivation, is being verified,” said the head of the mission, Juan Pablo Corlazzoli, who described the situation as very worrying. of violence in Ecuador.

Before Menéndez, on January 21, Julio César Farachio, who was a candidate for mayor of the city of Salinas when he was holding a rally for his electoral campaign, was also assassinated.

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