Noboa takes lead in Ecuador presidential race

Ecuador's presidential candidate for the National Democratic Action Party, Daniel Noboa, wearing a bulletproof vest, shows his ballot while voting at a polling station in Olon, Santa Elena province, Ecuador. (Photo/AFP)

Business heir Daniel Noboa is leading the vote count to be Ecuador's next president with 52.7 percent, ahead of his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez, who has tallied 47.3 percent, with over half the ballot boxes counted.

Polls closed in Ecuador Sunday with no reports of violence as both presidential candidates cast their votes in bulletproof vests just weeks after a rival was murdered.

The finalists in the runoff election -- lawyer Luisa Gonzalez, 45, and banana empire heir Daniel Noboa, 35 -- are vying to govern a country in the midst of a drug war and a rash of political assassinations.

Both have vowed to prioritise dealing with the escalating violence.

After images on social media showed a person appearing to fill out multiple ballots in favour of Noboa, the head of the National Elec toral Commission, Diana Atamaint, promised an "immediate" investigation.

Ten hours of voting Sunday unfolded amid a heavy police presence, but Interior Minister Juan Zapata said there had been no violent incidents.

Some 100,000 police and soldiers were deployed to keep the vote safe.

"It is a critical election," Freddy Escobar, a popular 49-year-old singer, told AFP in a voting line, citing crime as his main worry. "I am voting in fear, not knowing what will happen."

The main concerns of Ecuadorans, according to recent polls, are crime and violence in a country where the murder rate quadrupled in the four years to 2022.

"Today we win," Noboa shouted as he pumped his fist in the air after voting in the coastal town of Olon, where he lives.

Gonzalez also predicted victory as she cast her ballot in the southwest town of Canuto.

"My hunch is that Ecuador will win, in other words, Citizen Revolution," she said, referring to her political party.

Drug violence

Long a haven between major cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has seen violence explode in recent years as enemy gangs with links to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.

The fighting has seen at least 460 inmates massacred in prisons since February 2021 -- many beheaded or burned alive in mass riots.

And the bloodbath has spilled into the streets, with gangs dangling headless corpses from city bridges and detonating car bombs outside police stations in a show of force.

In August, the violence claimed the life of anti-graft and anti-cartel journalist and presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, mowed down in a barrage of submachine-gun fire after a campaign speech.

He had been p olling in second place.

A state of emergency was declared after Villavicencio's assassination, and Noboa and Gonzalez both campaigned, and voted, with heavy security details.

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Source: TRT