Ecuadorians will go to the polls Sunday amid apathy and distrust

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Presidential candidates Andres Arauz and Guillermo Lasso, in their next-to-last day of campaigning for the runoff election, will have to deal on Sunday with the indifference, distrust, and weariness of voters, who are far more concerned about health, jobs, and education.

Ecuador goes to the polls in the second round of elections to choose Lenín Moreno’s successor. He will leave power on May 24 after a single term in office and does so in difficult circumstances marked by the increasing restrictions caused by Covid-19.

Restrictions such as the curfew from 8 PM will be eased during the weekend, although the authorities have taken precautions.

Indifferent population

A scenario that overcomes a good part of the population, which if it were not for the fine that punishes absenteeism, admit that they would not even reach the ballot box.

“I won’t even go for the 40 dollars,” insisted a spontaneous Uber driver who several months ago lost his job as a pilot for a local airline in one of the country’s coastal provinces.

Like him, thousands of Ecuadorians have seen how their living conditions have plummeted as a result of the pandemic, and for more than a decade have been chronically distrustful of politics. Corruption has been able to get the better of them.

“End corruption and help so many people who have lost their jobs and education for the children!” asks Consuelo Curillo to the next government, whatever it may be.

With a line of hundreds of Quito residents behind her at the Civil Registry, where they hope to process their identity card before Sunday, she confesses that this Sunday she will void her vote because she does not believe that “they will bring a good situation for Ecuador,” nor does she trust the electoral system. After all, “there has been a lot of corruption and fraud in votes.”

“I have many doubts, many concerns because the way the first round was carried out does not guarantee democracy at all,” said Walter Salas, a middle-class citizen who was standing in line and who will void his vote for the same reason.

The vast majority of those consulted agree with them in a country that has been on edge for years due to the political rivalry between “correístas” (in favor of ex-president Rafael Correa) and “anticorreístas,” with mutual suspicions of what may happen on Sunday.

Fraud was not ruled out by anyone, even though the current ruler is not even in the race.

Two visions

Andrés Arauz (36), representing “correísmo”, Ecuador’s version of “Socialism of the XXI Century”, and Guillermo Lasso (65), exponent of liberal conservatism, are competing for the presidency.

Last February 7, in the first round, Arauz won 32.72% of the votes, while Lasso won the second position with 19.39%, only 32,000 votes ahead of the third place candidate, Yaku Pérez, who claimed fraud.

Perez and his party Pachakutik, who claim that “neither [candidate] inspires confidence”, urge their followers to “annul their vote”.

The more than 1.8 million voters for Perez could be crucial in the runoff; Arauz and Lasso have dedicated a great deal of effort to winning their votes since the campaign for this second round began in mid-March.

Today, in one of his last rallies, Lasso went to the Solar Clock of Cayambe, one of the claimed ‘Middle of the World’ sites around Quito.

“We wanted to be here, in the ‘Middle of the World’, as a symbol of the meeting, as a symbol of everything that unites us as Ecuadorians,” appealed the leader of the alliance Creating Opportunities-Christian Social Party (CREO-PSC).

From there, he acknowledged the “anguish” of the people, in what he considered “the worst crisis of all its history” in the health, economic, and even of values.

“We are all anguished by our health, by the lack of employment, the economy, insecurity, and the future,” he affirmed, trying to capture votes from an undecided mass that some experts raise to 20-25 % of the slightly more than 13 million voters summoned.

Pandemic and hunger

In a day that the two candidates have divided between Quito and Guayaquil, the two main cities of the country, both have refined their messages and urged an effective vote to influence the country’s course.

Arauz began in Quito with an act of public endorsement of his candidacy by the National Social Democratic Front and an agreement with the Network of Higher Technical and Technological Institutes of Ecuador to end in the afternoon closing of the campaign in Guayaquil. Tomorrow he is expected to do it in the capital.

His message, that of the need to restore a State in crisis at the service of “Ecuadorian families”, sensitive to the poorest and not to the interests of companies or multilateral organizations to which Ecuador has indebted itself to get out of last year’s financial quagmire, partly caused by previous Correa governments and partly by the pandemic.

The crisis has notoriously worsened the living conditions of ordinary citizens.

“The incoming government should give priority to vaccines so that people can get ahead. There is a lot of poverty; there are many beggars in the streets, many children working. If we don’t vaccinate, it will only encourage poverty and, maybe, tomorrow we will be like Venezuela, and the middle class will disappear,” summarizes Melanie Robayo, a young woman from Quito.

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