Print Page - Ecuadorian general election, 2013

Last month's Perfiles de Opinión poll:
Correa 63%, blank 12%, Lasso 8%, null 5%, Gutiérrez 4%, Acosta 2%, Noboa 2%

Last week's Opinión Públia Ecuador poll:
Correa 57%, blank 12%, Lasso 12%, null 6%, Gutiérrez 5%, Acosta 4%, Noboa 2%, all others under 1%

Yesterday's Market poll:
Correa 59.4 %, Lasso 11.6%, blank 7.1%, null 7.1%, Gutiérrez 5.3%, Acosta 3.1%, Noboa 3%, Rodas 1.4%, Zavala 1%, Wray 0.9%

Guayas (coastal province, 24% of the Ecuadorian voters): Correa 65.07%, Lasso 12.35%
Pichincha (Quito's province, in the highland, 18% of the total voters): Correa 57.17%, Lasso 12.8%
Manabí (coastal province, 9.5% of the total voters): Correa 71.7%, Lasso 7.5%

By comparison, 2009 presidential election results:
Correa 45.23%, Gutiérrez 24.57%, Noboa 9.92%, blank 6.74%, null 6.26%, Martha Roldós (anti-Correa left) 3.77%, four fringe candidates (including an evangelical female pastor) received less than 2%.

Guayas: Correa 39.27%, Gutiérrez 25.65%, Noboa 14.74%, blank 5.99%, null 5.99%, Roldós 4.47%
Pichincha: Correa 53.11%, Gutiérrez 18.56, Noboa 9.21%, null 6.28, Roldós 5.53%, blank 2.50%
Manabí: Correa 43.79%, Gutiérrez 24.21%, blank 10.57, Noboa 10.37%, null 6.8% Roldós 2.19%

Costa (coastal provinces) (% valid votes): Correa 50.92%, Gutiérrez 26.87%, Noboa 14.52%, Roldós 4.07%
Sierra (highland provinces): Correa 54.69%, Gutiérrez 27.55%, Noboa 8.32%, Roldós 4.68%
Oriental (Amazonian provinces): Gutiérrez 55.01%, Correa 35.25%, Noboa 4.34%, Roldós 3.40%

Gender gap (men and women are required to vote in separate polling stations) (% valid votes)
Men: Correa 52.5%, Gutiérrez 28.81%, Noboa 11.61%, Roldós 3.04%
Women: Correa 51.5%, Gutiérrez 27.69%, Noboa 11.2%, Roldós 5.58%.
(Women voters generally favored women candidates no matter their political orientation).

Looks like Correa will make big gains in Costa region. However Ecuadorian polls are notoriously bad and should not be taken too seriously. They tended to systematically underestimate Gutiérrez vote. I would not be totally surprised if Gutiérrez finally overtook Lasso the election day.

Pardon my broken English, my confuse and clumsy style and my lack of concision. I'm not good at writing, especially in English, and especially on the Net.

Since late June, I closely follow Ecuador politics by reading articles from websites of El Universo, El Comercio, and Hoy, and various stuff found on the Internet. As an outsider observer (who never went to Ecuador and who is not totally fluent in Spanish), I certainly miss or misunderstand some things and I'm far from being an expert of the messy and complicated Ecuadorian political life (just two facts: each eight presidential elections between 1979 and 2006 were won by a different party; Correa is the first elected president since 1996 to have completing his term). Anyways, here what I understand of the Acosta/Correa rivalry (and also some details on Acosta and his supporting coalition).

Acosta biography

Acosta is an economist, graduated from Cologne University and specialized in energy economics, and a respected left-wing intellectual. In 1996, he participated in the foundation of the indigenous movement Pachakutik. He played an important role in the elaboration of Correa's electoral platform in 2006 and is considered as one of the main ideologues of the “Citizen's Revolution” (Revolución Ciudadana), Correa regime's official doctrine.

Acosta was energy minister in Correa's government in 2006-2007 and had been the inspiration behind the Yasuní-ITT Initiative (to summarize: international community will pay Ecuador for not drilling oil within the Yasuní National Park, one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world). He then resigned to run as PAIS movement (Correa's Party) top candidate in the election for the 2007 Constituent Assembly election and was elected president of the Constituent Assembly. He abruptly resigned this post in June 2008 to protest Correa's interference in the drafting of the Constitution.

The environmental issue

Acosta is running on an eco-socialist platform and openly opposed Correa's extractive policy in the Amazonian provinces. He notably opposes oil drilling in the Block 31 area, claiming that it will heavily pollute the adjacent Yasuní National Park. Correa had denied such thing and ordered the begin of drilling for the months ahead. Acosta also raised concerns over a big copper-mining project in El Mirador (in the Amazonian province of Zamora Chinchipe), which will be managed by the Chinese-owned Ecuavisa. These two big projects were initiated, according to Acosta, without consulting indigenous communities as required by the Constitution. Also, Acosta wants to keep the constitutional ban on GMOs that Correa promised to remove.

The criminalization of the social movements

Acosta is also denouncing what he calls the “criminalization” of the social movements by Correa's government. For example, in March 2012, indigenous and leftist organizations protested in Quito over a controversial water law which, according to its detractors, would allowed exploitation of water resources by extractive industries. Ten young leftist militants were arrested by the police in the Luluncoto sector on possession of cell phones, political books and various leftist stuff (Che Guevara shirts, Sandinist flags, Inti-Illimani's and anarchist singer Jaime Guevara's discs). They were accused to be part of a maoist illegal group and charged with terrorism and sabotage. Allegations of police brutality surfaced and critics were raised about the indictment process and the upcoming trial. Most notably, Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón - hired to review Ecuadorian new judicial system – had underlined the fact that terms like “sabotage” and “terrorism” were historically used by Latin-American dictatorships in the 1970s to detain political opponents.

The Partidocracia

Another point of contention between Acosta and Correa is what Acosta considers the take-over of Correa's party (Allianza PAIS) by opportunists and politicians linked to the old corrupt political class (the Partidocracia). Many of Correa's old allies (those who have supported his first candidacy in 2006 and were part of his first administration) side now with the left opposition and support Acosta's candidacy. These notably include center-left politician Gustavo Larrea (Correa's campaign manager in 2006 and his right-hand man in the first years of his presidency), defrocked priest and former PAIS representative Fernando Vega, and Gustavo Darquea, a former PAIS coordinator in Guayas province. Also, indigenous activist and former Correa minister Mónica Chuji have been sentenced to one year in jail for having defamed Correa's powerful public administration secretary Vinicio Alvarado. Chuji had accused Alvarado to be “one of the Revolution's nouveaux riches”.

Alvarado has been campaign manager for histrionic populist Abdalá Bucaram's 1988 presidential bid and for arch-conservative Jaime Nebot's 1996 presidential bid. His brother, Fernando, is currently communications secretary in Correa administration, and his father, the now-deceased Humberto Alvarado, was elected PAIS representative in 2009 despite his past active militancy in the rightist Social Christian Party. Another figure despised by the anti-Correa left is Alexis Mera, legal secretary to President, who has been a close advisor of León Febres Cordero, the flamboyant rightist president between 1984 and 1988.

Alvarado's and Mera's cases are far from isolated. When PAIS was founded, it was a movement with weak roots in civil society and mostly constituted by idealist academics and militants with no government experience. To keep power and win mayoralties, PAIS recruited numerous veteran politicians and local caciques, coming not only from traditional left parties but also from populist or conservative parties (including Gutiérrez's and Álvaro Noboa's parties). This clearly contradicts Correa's continual attacks on the Partidocracia and his pledge to rid Ecuador of its old corrupt political class.

Correa's growing authoritarism

Finally, Acosta denounces Correa's authoritarian tendencies. While he supports the 2008 Constitution and the strengthening of executive power it has bring, he criticized the 2011 referendum on justice reform restricting judicial independence, and called it a violation of principles of the Citizen's Revolution. As such, Acosta sees himself as the defender of the 2008 Constitution, which was perverted by Correa.

Acosta also denounces Correa's numerous lawsuits against media. I probably need to write something about that but information is easibly available in English. Violations against press freedom are denounced by all opposition candidates and the theme isn't specific to Acosta.

Acosta is backed by the Plurinational Coordination of the Lefts, an umbrella organization grouping several leftist parties. The two most important are the indigenist Pachakutik (in full, Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement – New Country, MUPP-NP) and the marxist-leninist Democratic Popular Movement (MPD). Both have their reasons to be angry with Correa.

Pachakutik

Pachakutik is the political arm of the once powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE). The party enthusiastically supported Gutiérrez in 2002 and feel betrayed when the latter moved to the right and attempted to build his own political base in Pachakutik-controled indigenous areas. It then launched a personal vendetta against Gutiérrez and united with Social Christian Party and left movements to remove him in 2005. The ethnicist faction of Pachakutik then took control of the party. In 2006 presidential election, Pachakutik refused to support a non indigenous candidate and ran its own candidate, Luis Macas, for president. The latter made a poor showing, winning only 2.19%.

The CONAIE and Pachakutik reluctantly supported Correa in the 2006 presidential runoff and were discontent with the 2007 Constitution because it didn't grant enough rights to the indigenous to its taste and only give Kichwa the status of “language of intercultural relations” rather than that of equal to Spanish official language. Also, Pachakutik was disappointed that Ecuador was not officially called a plurinational state like Morales' Bolivia. Controversial mining and water laws and Correa's disdain for dialogue with social movements convinced the CONAIE to openly confront the president, with little success. In 2009 presidential election, Pachakutik and the CONAIE ran no candidate and refused to support any candidate (not even Martha Roldás, who was running as a left-wing opponent to Correa). In the concurrently held legislative election, it made its worst-ever showing. This year, Pachakutik is actively supporting the white Alberto Acosta and is running joint lists with the MPD on national level and in several provinces.

Pachakutik is plagued by internal divisions and personal squabbles. For instance, it had formed a joint list with PAIS in Chimborazo province and one of its historical leader in Carchi was Lasso's first-choice running mate. There are also probably ethnic rivalries but I'm not qualified to write about.

The Democratic Popular Movement

The Democratic Popular Movement (MPD) was founded in 1978 as the electoral organization of the maoist Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador. It is heavy linked with the trade unions, especially the teachers' union (UNE) and in the past the party had covertly traded its support in return of retaining unions' privileges. It also had sometimes employed violence but never follow the path of armed struggle as the Shining Path did in Peru. In 2002, the MPD supported Gutiérrez's candidacy but broke with him when he endorsed a privatization agenda. However, in a bizarre move, it reentered coalition with Gutiérrez in November 2004 until the fall of the latter in April 2005 and was subsequently punished by voters in the 2006 elections.

The MPD supported Correa's government until the passage of a law reforming the notoriously ineffective education system. The law undermined the patronage of the UNE over the recruitment of teachers and, according to Correa's opponents, set up a new patronage on behalf of Correa.

The MPD tends to have his best results in the coastal province of Esmeraldas, also one of the poorest Ecuadorian provinces, and home to important oil refinery. Afro-Ecuadorians account here for around 45% of total population. MPD had historically been the only party to actively promote Afro-Ecuadorians to effective leadership positions. In 1984, it nominated Jaime Hurtado as the first Afro-Ecuadorian to run in a presidential election and Hurtado became then the party's leader until his assassination in 1999. Lenín Hurtado, Jaime's son, is a a MPD bigwig and is currently running for Guayas deputy.

While the MPD could be seen as a sectarian and corrupt party, it however has achieved some local success. In 2000, trade-unionist Ernesto Estupiñán was elected mayor of the dilapidated and dirty city of Esmeraldas (the first Afro-Ecuadorian mayor of a major city) and successively transformed it into a modern city with functional infrastructure. For some reason, he faced a difficult reelection in 2009 and barely defeated his Roldosist opponent. That same year, the MPD candidate to prefect (equivalent to U.S. governor) of Esmeraldas province defeated his PAIS opponent, a former provincial leader of PRIAN, by ten points.

Other parties of the Plurinational Coordination of the Lefts

Other movements supporting Acosta's candidacy include Popular Power, a provincial center-left movement led by Azuay prefect Paúl Carrasco elected with PAIS and now a committed opponent to Correa; the so-called Revolutionary Socialist wing of the joke Socialist Party (the rest of the party still supporting Correa); Martha Roldós' moribund Ethical and Democratic Network (RED); Acosta's own tiny Montecristí Vive; Convocatoria, the political vehicle of Loja deputy Nívea Vélez; and Gustavo Larrea's Participación.

Acosta's program and running mate

Acosta's electoral platform includes: the end of the criminalization of social movements; a drop of the VAT rate and an income tax raise; the prohibition of mining activities in protected areas and more generally a distancing from the extractive economic model; the development of small local business and of tourism; the inclusion of sexual and reproductive rights into the Constitution.

Acosta's running mate is Marcia Caicedo, a lawyer and former counselor of the National Electoral Council linked to the MPD. An Afro-Ecuadorian from Esmeraldas province, she came from a poor background and was a conchera (shellfish gatherer) when young.

Thanks. As I have wrote above, I'm not good in writing in English (verb conjugation isn't really my cup of tea) and spent long time to wrote posts. I prefer writing long posts because Ecuadorian politics is very complicated and parties can't be reduced to their self-proclaimed ideology.

Quote from: Nyarlathotep on February 06, 2013, 05:29:28 AM

And a big LOL at the Wikipedia page of Acosta's coalition, la Unidad Plurinacional de las Izquierdas, labelled as "izquierda infantil" (infantile left) in the political spectrum. :D Probably written by Correa's supporters, no ? :P

“Izquierda infantil” was indeed a term used by Correa himself to label his leftist opponents.

Quote from: Nyarlathotep on February 06, 2013, 05:29:28 AM

you brush a quick painting of the other candidates, and tell us what the latest polls look like ?

I will try to write more developed profiles but:

Guillermo Lasso (CREO). Conservative candidate linked to Guayaquil big-business. He is desperatly trying to attract centrist vote. He never ran an election and has made several mistakes. His support is concentrated in the coastal provinces and in the highland big cities.

Álvaro Noboa (PRIAN). Uncharismatic joke populist with vague electoral platform. He uses his vast fortune to buy votes and was yesterday fined by Electoral Court for this reason. His support is heavily concentrated in coastal provinces.

Lucio Gutiérrez (PSP). Now a right-wing populist. He is running on a law-and-order platform and looks like Correa's most vocal opponent. His support is concentrated in the Amazonian provinces (Oriente) and the Sierra indigenous countryside. He had made inroads in Coastal provinces in the last presidential election but probably will suffered heavy loses in that area due to Lasso's competition (there was no conservative candidate in 2009).

Nelson Závala (PRE). Crazy evangelical pastor backed by the hardcore populist Roldosist Party. He is running on a quasi theocratic platform. Roldosist Party is neither a Correa supporter nor a Correa opponent. It will sell out to the one who could permit their insane leader Abdalá Bucaram to return from his fourth Panamian exile. PRE support is concentrated in the poor sectors of the Costa (especially in Esmeraldas province) and non existant in Sierra and Oriente.

Now, some details on the two irrelevant candidates (unfortunately they are, with Acosta, the only candidates with some ideological consistency).

Ruptura 25 is a social-democratic movement, which places a strong emphasis on women's and LGTB Rights (one of their candidates in the legislative election is a transsexual). It was founded in 2004, 25 years after the return of the democracy, and at first backed Correa's government. It broke with Correa in 2011 over the referendum on justice reform (which limited justice independence). Ruptura managed to recruit Paco Moncayo, a retired general and popular former mayor of Quito who played a key role in the falls of Presidents Bucaram in 1996 and Gutiérrez in 2004.

Ruptura's candidate is the 37-year old Norman Wray, a former PAIS member of the Constituent Assembly and, until recently, municipal councilor in Quito. In this last post, he developed programs to eradicate verbal and physical harassment in the Quito bus and to promote the use of bikes in the city. The second youngest candidate, he run an artsy campaign targeting mostly young middle-class of the Sierra cities. He suffered from low name-recognition and will probably made a poor showing outside of Quito and Cuenca. His running mate is Ángela Mendoza, an independent social activist from Manabí province with no political past.

Ruptura's platform is very similar to Acosta's one. It wants to put an end to the extractive economic model and develop renewable energies. However, it's economically a bit to the right of Acosta's platform. As Acosta, Wray supports same-sex marriage.

There is an eighth candidate, that has been omitted in the first post:

Mauricio Rodas, a 37-year old Quito lawyer and the youngest candidate. He had been a vice-president of the Social Christian youth movement and lived 10 years abroad in U.S., Chile, and Mexico where he worked for the think tank Fundación Ethos. Thus, he didn't take part in the 2000s insane political strife and appears as a fresh face.

Rodas is running for the newly-founded United Society for More Action (SUMA) a self-described progressive centrist party which advocated “responsible government” and the end of the confrontational style adopted by many politicians (especially Correa). At first, SUMA failed to gather the required number of signatures for register. However, after a legal action, it qualified to be on the ballot. The fact that there are many lawyers and even a renowned jurist on SUMA's lists probably help as they presumably have a better knowledge of the electoral code than the inept National Electoral Council.

Rodas is backed by the Evangelical Indigenous Federation (FEINE) and its political arm, the Amauta Yuyay movement, which is pretty influential in Chimborazo (numerically the largest indigenous population of any Ecuadorian province; highest percentage of indigenous population of Sierra provinces) where it win a deputy in 2009. FEINE is at odd with both Correa and the CONAIE. So, it reluctantly supported Gutiérrez in last presidential election. For this election, it first attempted to negotiated a deal with Ruptura (which is really surprising, considering the Ruptura's very social liberal platform). I highly doubt FEINE support will be translated in a strong Rodas performance in Chimborazo.

Rodas is also supported by César Montúfar's National Democratic Concert Movement (MCND). Montúfar is a center-left politician and a vocal opponent to Correa. Between 2002-2005 he was director of the citizen's organization Participación Ciudadana (PC), which more or less does the incompetent electoral authority's job (i.e. encouraging people to vote, informing citizens about how to vote, observing actual voting and proceeding to quick count). Montúfar was elected deputy for Pichincha province in 2009, the only MCND elected. Last year, Montúfar attempted to re-register his movement but failed to gather the required number of signatures (a clear evidence that his party has very little popular support) and claimed it was part of a Correa's ploy. Btw, the MCND director, Juan Carlos Solines, left the party to run as Lasso's running mate, to the great dismay of Montúfar.

Rodas' own running mate is Ines Manzano, an environmental lawyer and expert in sustainable development with no political past.

Last Sunday, Rodas was held up and robbed in an “express kidnapping” while in the Quito Airport. Gangsters stole him his mobile cells, his wedding ring, and his credit cards. Then they threw an acidic substance” in his eyes and left him alone in the streets. Rodas was then briefly hospitalized.

Thank you for your welcome !

I forgot to mention that Ethical and Democratic Network, Montecristí Vive and Participación are unregistered parties. Note also that the Market poll on legislative election is apparently only reported by El Telégrafo, the state-owned newspaper, and is probably biased.

Lasso biography

Despite running on a vaguely centrist platform, Lasso is indeed the candidate of the traditional right. He came from Guayaquil, which is both the economic lung and the most populous city of the country. He is the former head of Banco de Guayaquil and was governor (an appointed position in the ministry of interior; the Ecuadorian counterpart of U.S. governor is the prefect, which is elected) of Guayas (the Guayaquil province) in 1998-1999. He then was appointed “super-minister” of Economy in the christian-democrat administration of President Jamil Mahuad, few months after the collapse of the whole banking system. He resigned after only 37 days in office after Mahuad decided an Ecuador default of the debt. Lasso was then ambassador-at-large in Gutiérrez administration. In that post he dealt with the international financial organizations and Washington government.

A self-described centrist, Lasso has been tackled by Correa's partisans for being a member of the Opus Dei and for being advised by Antonio Sola, a former political advisor to both Mariano Rajoy and Felipe Calderón. WikiLeaks also revealed that he was an U.S. embassy informant. Throughout the campaign, Correa's propaganda portrayed Lasso as a lackey of Washington and as a politician who wanted to restored to power the oligarchy and the partidocracia. It also attempted to link him to the Ferriado, the President Mahuad's very unpopular decision to close banks and to froze bank deposits in 1999.

Incidentally or not, on last December, Ecuadorian justice asked Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant for Mahuad (who is now living in exile in the United States). Interpol refused to do so, arguing the case was politically motivate. Correa called Interpol refusal an “insult”.

I can't post links but if you want to see how Correa's electoral propaganda portrays Lasso (without great subtlety), type “La Feriatta” in Youtube. The glass-wearing man and the guy with a mustache are supposed to respectively represent Lasso and Guayaquil mayor Jaime Nebot. The man in the photo is Gutiérrez. While la Feriatta isn't officially a Correa's election ad, it was aired on public TV channels. The National Electoral Council ordered to stop broadcasting the ad after a complaint from Lasso.

Lasso's running mate
At first, Lasso surprisingly chose Auki Tituaña as his running mate. A Kichwa (Quechua), Tituaña was a historical leader of Pachakutik and was mayor of the canton of Cotacachi (Imbabura province, Northern Sierra), one of the first indigenous mayors in Ecuador. Strategically, it was probably a good choice as it could have helped Lasso to attract indigenous votes. On the other hand, Lasso lost any ideological consistency, as Tituaña is pretty leftist and had previously labeled Correa as a “neo-liberal”. Anyway, Tituaña renounced to run as his candidacy would be disqualified because he had omitted to resign his Pachakutik membership before the registration deadline (a candidate registered as a member of a registered party can't run for another registered party except if the two parties formed a joint list). The only way for Tituaña to get his candidacy accepted was that Pachakutik expelled him from its ranks. Pachakutik refused to do so; but the CONAIE immediately expelled Tituaña after he joined Lasso's camp. Apparently, Tituaña had since played no role in Lasso's campaign.

Lasso's second choice for running mate is Juan Carlos Solines. Solines is a member of the centrist party Concertation but, as Concertation failed to qualify as a recognized party, there is no problem for the electoral authorities. Solines looks like a poor choice: he was assistant to the conservative president Durán Ballén in the 1990s, lived in Quito, and has a poor name recognition.

Lasso's platform
Lasso began his campaign in September by promising to raise the bono de desarrollo humano (BDH; some kind of monthly minimum revenue for poorest Ecuadorians) from 35$ to 50$. He also said the rise of the BDH will be financed by cutting the government's propaganda budget. This backlashed when Correa announced his own intention to raise the BDH to 50$ and to finance this measure by heavier taxes on financial services. Then all other candidates promised too to increase the BDH. Noboa said he will raise the BDH to 60$, Gutiérrez proposed to increase it to 65$, Acosta said he will raise it to 70$ (but will transformed it into a productive bond to favor local production). Unsurprisingly, the Roldosist Party proposed the highest rise (from 35$ to 80$). In November, the National Assembly, following Correa's request, vote the raise of the BDH to 50$. It became effective on January 1st, only seven weeks before the election.

Lasso said that if elected president, he will keep Ecuador in the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) but will have a critical attitude toward this organization. He also promised that Assange will keep his asylum status.
Other promises includes:
- the abolition of 9 taxes, including the controversial green tax[/li][/list]
- the unconditional abandoning of oil drilling in Yasuní
- the hiring of 20,000 extra police officers
- less bureaucracy to encourage business creation
- creation of development hubs (apparently some kind of free zones)
- restoring visas on foreigners
- a constitutional ban on immediate presidential reelection.

Lasso has numerous flaws but is probably the best candidate to force Correa into a run-off. In the case of the second round, he would have difficulties to rally Acosta voters (quite understandable) but perhaps also Gutiérrez's voters as most of Gutiérrez electorate is made up of indigenous and mestizos who will associated Lasso to the oligarchy.

Lasso is backed by his own party, the newly-founded Creating Opportunities (CREO), the old Social Christian Party (PSC), the provincial Madera de Guerrero Civic Movement (MG), and the now totally irrelevant Liberal Radical Party (seriously, I was surprised to learn it has not died). I will write later on these parties.

Could a Spanish-speaker poster explained me what “Madera de Guerrero” actually means, I don't get it. The translation I founded (wooden warrior) looks like strange. The term apparently came from a Pepe Jaramillo's song about Guayaquil's inhabitants.

Thanks/Merci !

In the news:
Yesterday, Guillermo Lasso criticized the silence of Juan Manuel Santos and Sebastián Piñera on the postponement of Chávez's swearing-in. He said that they are “complicit in what is happening in Venezuela.”

Correa campaigned in the province of Carchi (northern Sierra) and was criticized for using an army helicopter for his travel. He was endorsed by the six mayors of the province. Three of them are members of PAIS, one of the Roldosist Party, and the two others of conservative provincial parties.

Today, Electoral Court rejected Marcia Caicedo's complaint over Correa's use of government funding to run campaign. The complaint notably concerns the use of an army helicopter in a Correa's TV-add. Caicedo said she will appeal the decision.

Publication of opinion polls are now banned until the polling day, as required by the Electoral Law.

I have problems writing in English. I'm so slow :(

Anyways, here what I wrote about CREO (I have spent too much time on this boring party).

CREO (Creating Opportunities) was founded in 2011 by César Monge and Mae Montaño to prepare the ground for Lasso's candidacy; Lasso officially joined the party in August 2012 but is clearly the party's leader since the beginning. César Monge is a businessman with no political past; he was president of the Chamber of Aquaculture.

Mae Montaño is a most interesting figure. She is an Afro-Ecuadorian from Esmeraldas and was raised in a slum by a single-mother. She was involved in feminism and Afro-Ecuatorian activism and ran for Esmeraldas mayoralty as an independent candidate in 1996. She then managed the Esmeraldas Port Authority between 1997 and 2003 and had to deal with the inept and corrupt Roldosist mayor and then with the MPD mayor. In 2005, she was tipped as a possible vice president. In 2007, she participated in the foundation of the party A New Option (UNO), which described itself as the new option of the Ecuadorian right, and was elected a deputy to the Constituent Assembly. She then joined César Montúfar's centrist MCND but failed to be reelected. Montaño is the top candidate on the CREO national list. CREO membership includes many other businessmen, notably Patricio Donoso, until recently chairman of the National Business Association (ANDE), who ran for deputy on the second position on the national list.

Most top candidates for CREO have political experience. Therefore, various Social Christian provincial caciques joined the ranks of CREO and are running for deputies either on a CREO list, either on a joint list between their personal vehicle and CREO. There are Jorge Zambrano, former mayor of Manta, Manabí (1996-2009); Luis Fernando Torres, former mayor of Ambato, Tungurahua (1992-2000) and leader of the Tiempo de Cambio party; Leonardo Viteri, former mayor of Sucre, Manabí (2000-2004), who seeks reelection under his Humanist Civic Action Movement for Ethics, Labor, and Equity (MACHETE; its symbol is a shield and two machetes); and Raúl Auquilla Ortega, former prefect of Loja (1996-2004).

Two dissident deputies from Noboa's PRIAN joined CREO. There were Fernando Flores, deputy for Ecuadorians living in Canada and the United States, who is running for reelection, and deputy from Esmeraldas Lenín Chica. The latter attempted to run for reelection but his candidacy was rejected after he failed to resign his PRIAN membership before the registration deadline.

CREO nominated his top candidates in Amazonian provinces with apparently little regard. In Napo, its candidate José Luis Columbo is a former Pachakutik deputy (2002-2006) who was expelled from that party after he voted with the PSP-PSC alliance. He then unsuccessfully tried to be reelected first with the support of the Roldosist party and then as a PRIAN candidate. In Orellana, CREO candidate, Eduardo Montaño was a Democratic Left-turned-PRIAN-turned Democratic Left member.

I could continue to write about Democratic Left (formerly a very important party, now technically dead), about PSC (a key party to understand the whole mess in the 1990s and early 2000s and still a relatively important party) and about Madero de Guerrero. I also began to write something about the vote system. But perhaps do you have some specific requests or something a bit more concise?

In the news:

Electoral Council finally lift the ban on exit polls. In 2011, exit polls were notoriously bad; they predicted a large victory of the “yes” while actual results gave a tighter victory. Several polls companies announced that they will not made exit polls as they lack of time to prepare the polls.

Electoral Court orders the ban of the Correa's ad showing children in violation of the Electoral Law.

Quote from: WillipsBrighton on February 08, 2013, 11:58:17 AM

I was going to ask about the Democratic Left. Just go with your own instinct about what to tell us.

Probably a bad idea considering my lack of brevity. I had begun by writing something on the Democratic Left but this was so confuse that I finally chose to follow a chronological approach beginning in the 1980s. However, I rapidly began to think that many things were incomprehensible without an elaborate explanation on the historical Costa/Sierra divide and the particular nature of Ecuadorian populism (probably not that particular but I have a very incomplete knowledge of Latin America political history outside Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina). So finally I wrote a very long post on Ecuadorian history with some digressions on two areas where I'm feeling a bit incompetent: demographics and political system.

Sorry for:
- writing in a bad English
- turning this thread into a complete mess
- being unable to write in a succinct style (I'm very afraid to forget something)

Pre-colonial era and independence war

Ecuador is fractured by a huge regional divide between the coastal provinces (the Costa) and the highland provinces (the Sierra). This divide is reflected in the traditional rivalry between the coastal city of Guayaquil and the capital Quito. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Sierra was the most populated region and was favored by Spanish colonial authorities over the Costa. While indigenous influence was strong in the Sierra, it was far more weak in the Costa.

In 1808, one of the first (if not the first) colonial revolt against Spanish (or more fairly Napoleonic) colonial rule erupted in Quito. The revolt was crushed by Spanish troops. It bestowed Quito the title of Luz de América (the Light of America) and the bicentennial of the event was celebrated in 2009 and presented as the bicentennial of Ecuadorian independence. The second colonial revolt began in 1820 in Guayaquil. On the contrary of Quito's revolt, which was loyalist and anti-Napoleonic, the Guayaquil revolt was of liberal inspiration. Quito remained passive and was liberated from Spanish rule only after the general Antonio Sucre defeated the Spanish army on the slopes of the Pichincha volcano in 1822. Quito and Guayaquil were then merged into the Gran Colombia until the breakup of this state in 1830.

The Conservative Era

The first years of independent Ecuador history were characterized by political instability, civil wars and economic troubles (I read somewhere that the widespread counterfeiting of the national currency was a big problem). Wars erupted with both Peru and Colombia and the country was several times invaded. In 1859, the conservative Gabriel García Moreno came to power in Quito and the next year crushed the Peruvian-backed rival government which had been proclaimed in Guayaquil. After seeking to turn his country into a French protectorate, García Moreno (himself a Guayaquileño) came to the conclusion that Ecuador could only be united under the Catholic faith. He established a quasi theocratic state and ruled as an autocrat until his assassination in 1875. García Moreno's Conservative Party retained absolute control of the power until the Liberal Revolution of 1895. The Conservative Party ruled with the support of the Catholic Church and the Sierra's large landowners and favored a protectionist policy aiming at preserving the domestically oriented Sierran agriculture.

At the same time, the Costa experimented an economic boom thanks to the production of cacao and other export crops (notably coffee and banana). Consequently, the Costa's liberal bourgeoisie pushed to greater commercial opening. The Costa bourgeoisie was despised by its Sierran counterpart which referred to Costan inhabitants as monos (“monkeys”).

The Liberal Era

Several revolts against the Conservative rule occurred in the Costa until the Liberal Eloy Alfaro (from the Costa) defeated the conservative army and became president in 1895. He ruled the country, with an interruption between 1901 and 1906, until his resignation in 1911. Alfaro pursued an anticlerical policy and notably introduced civil marriage, legalized divorce, abolished the death penalty, and established a secular school system. One of his greatest achievements is probably the building of the railway between Quito and Guayaquil, which was opened in 1908. This late date (explained by the hostile geography) is very telling about how the Costa and the Sierra were isolated of each other. Alfaro was arrested in Guayaquil in 1912 while attempting to return to power and transferred in Quito (via the railway he had built) where he was lynched by an angry mob. Eloy Alfaro's legacy was claimed by various liberal, leftist and populist parties. The 2008 Constituent Assembly was symbolically convened in Alfaro's birthplace, the city of Montecristí in coastal province of Manabí.

The Liberal Party (officially Ecuadorian Radical Liberal Party, PLRE) maintained itself in power by rigged elections throughout the 1910s and the 1920s. However, the real power passed into the hands of Guayaquil's bankers who funded government expenditures by issuing banknotes without regard for gold reserves. The massive influx of banknotes, combined to the collapse of world cacao prices plunged Ecuador into economic turmoil in the 1920s. In July 1925, a military group staged a coup (the Revolución Juliana) and then named former Quito mayor Isidro Ayora as president. Ayora created the first National Bank, granted women the right to vote and enacted a new constitution. This new constitution permitted deputies to remove ministers; this provision, preserved in most of the successive constitutions until the 1990s, will greatly contributed to the destabilization of political life. Indeed, Ayora resigned in 1931 after the Congress had spent its time to obstruct his policy and to remove his ministers. Meanwhile, the Great Depression had exacerbated the economic problems breeding social unrest.

The country descended into chaos: from 1931 until 1948, none of the countless presidents managed to finish their terms. Two political figures from this period deserved mention: Carlos Arroyo del Río and José María Velasco Ibarra. A liberal from Guayaquil linked to the Coastal oligarchy, Arroyo del Río was fraudulently elected president in 1940 and near-finished his four-year term. The most important event in his administration was the war with Peru in July 1941 over sovereignty over a large Amazonian area. Peru army won an easy victory as Arroyo del Río, who was more focused on keeping power rather than winning the war, maintained the bulk of the troops in Quito and refused to distribute weapons to civilians. Arroyo del Río was forced to sign the Rio de Janeiro Protocol that recognized Peruvian sovereignty over the dispute area. He was then ousted in 1944 and replaced by José María Velasco Ibarra, the other political figure that emerged from the 1930s and 1940s. A Quiteño, Velasco Ibarra was previously elected president in 1934 and ousted the following year. He also probably won the rigged election of 1940 before he was forced to flee in exile. Nevertheless, as previously stated, he was returned in office in 1944 as the head of a motley coalition of conservatives, socialists, communists and dissident liberals; he was elected president by the Congress and not by popular vote. After continuous political struggles and the adoption of two successive constitutions, Velasco Ibarra was finally ousted after three years in office.

The 1948-1963 years

After successive transitional presidencies, the first fair presidential election (previous elections were either certainly rigged or probably rigged) was organized in 1948 and won by the dissident liberal Galo Plaza Lasso, a former mayor of Quito, and also son of a previous president. As the illiterates couldn't vote, the election concerned only a small part of the population. Plaza Lasso presided over the banana boom which propelled Ecuador as the first banana-exporting country and enjoyed political stability. The 1952 election was won by Velasco Ibarra, who spent the previous years in exile. Velasco was supported by the falangist Ecuadorian Nationalist Revolutionary Action (ARNE), the Guayaquil-based populist Concentration of Popular Forces (CFP, I will later develop more on this party), and dissident conservatives. Once in office, he proved unable (or unwilling) to keep his coalition together and send the CFP leader, Carlos Guevara Moreno, in exile. His administration was also marked by countless ministerial reshuffles and by a costly policy of major works. He however managed to complete his term, the only one out of his five, thanks to the buying of army support by an increase of military budget and to the effectiveness of his interior minister Camilo Ponce Enríquez.

This last was barely elected president in 1956 against Raúl Clemente Huerta, the candidate of a coalition of liberals, socialists and communists. Ponce was supported by his own party, the Sierra-based Social Christian Party (PSC), by the ARNE, by the old Conservative Party, and by Velasco Ibarra. The latter broke almost immediately with Ponce and go into a self-exile in Buenos Aires. He returned in 1960 to run once more time for president, apparently under his own party, and won in a landslide (48% compared to 22% for his nearest opponent). Velasco Ibarra took a nationalist and anti-American line. He openly rejected the Rio de Janeiro protocal and sent his vice president, Carlos Julio Arosemena, an outspoken advocate of the Cuban Revolution, in a trip to Moscow. However, Velasco's coalition once more broke out over deteriorating economy and political struggles over Velasco's succession. The growing opposition between the president and his vice president degenerated in violent confrontation. In October 1961, a gun battle broke out in Congress between Velasco followers and Arosemena who presided the legislature. Finally, Velasco ordered the dismiss and the arrest of Arosemena. Arguing that Velasco had acted illegally, the military removed him from office and forced him into exile. After internal fights within the army command, air force prevails over the other branches and Arosemena was sworn in office in November 1961 as Velasco's successor.

A colorful populist from Guayaquil, Arosemena was the first politician from the Costa to assume office since 1948 (note, however, that, if the electoral results I have found are correct, Velasco Ibarra won Guayas province in 1952 and 1960). Arosemena tried to lead a progressive policy and notably promote the creation of two universities in Guayaquil. He also attempted to preserve diplomatic ties with Cuba. The opposition deputies tried unsuccessfully to use his notorious alcoholism to remove him from office. Finally, Arosemena was ousted and deported to Panamá by the military in July 1963 after having “shouted abuse at U.S. Ambassador Maurice Bernbaum, vomited in front of the gathering and committed 'even more indecorous acts'” during a reception (Wikipedia, quoting a Miami News article). U.S. government was heavily suspected to have intervened to remove Arosemena.

Digressions about Ecuadorian demographics

Arosemena presidency coincide more or less with the swing of the economical and political pendulum from the Sierra to the Costa. This is apparently in the 1950s
(haven't found reliable source) that the Coastal population surpassed that of the Sierra thanks to the banana boom. As I stated before while the Indigenous are almost absent from the Costa region, they have a significant presence in Sierra. The following is very confuse to me, this must absolutely not be considered as authoritative.

In my understanding, economic development of the Costa region in the twentieth century attracted migrants from the Sierra region, and notably indigenous workers who lost part of their native culture and cross-bred with other communities. These mestizos, who mostly work in the agricultural sector, are referred as Montubios or Montuvios. They are concentrated in the Costa's provinces of Los Rios (35.05% of the population according to the 2010 census), Manabí (19.18%), Guayas (11.27%), and Santa Elena (4.91%). 13.16% of the Costa's population self-identified as Montubios, only 0.95% in Sierra region, and 0.65% in Amazonian provinces (Oriente). While Mestizos officially account for 72% of the total Ecuadorian population, they are in fact informally divided in several groups along a mixture of ethnic, linguistic, and social features. Beside Montubio, the derogatory term of Cholo is also used to label another type of Mestizos. I don't know what this term covers exactly. Cholos seems to be rather associated with the Sierra but they are apparently also present in the Coastal province of Manabí. Cholos are considered as being supportive of Lucio Gutiérrez. I also found the term of Longo and have no idea to what it referred to.

As I stated previously, Afro-Ecuatorians are concentrated in the Coastal province of Esmeraldas (43.91% of the population). The 2009 census distinguishes three groups: Afroecuatoriano or Afrodescendiente; Mulato; and Negro. I have no idea what is the difference between the first and the third. Total of these three categories accounts for 10.69% in the Costa, 3.32% in the Sierra, and 3.13% in the Oriente.

Indigenous accounts for 1.09% of the population in the Costa, 11.32% in the Sierra, 33.12% in the Oriente, and 7.03% of the total Ecuadorian population. This number is generally considered as underestimate as censuses are based on self-identification. Some Indigenous prefer to declared themselves as Mestizos. It's also important to note that Ecuadorian indigenous movements, contrary to the Bolivian ones (I don't know for Peru), as far as I know, never advocated the formation of an indigenous breakaway state nor the restoration of the Inca Empire. Also, no guerrilla movement managed to establish a base in indigenous countryside (a significant difference with Peru).

The 1963-1972 decade

The military junta that succeeded Arosemena prove itself unable to restore order in Ecuador and agreed on policy issues. Army and navy united to sideline the air force, whose leaders advocated a nationalist and progressive agenda. Nevertheless, the junta enacted a mild agrarian reform that notably abolished the huasipungo, a sort of indigenous serfdom. The junta alienated coastal oligarchy's support by adopting protectionist measures. In March 1966, a student and labor protest, supported by both coastal and sierran oligarchs, was violently repressed. This led to the fall of the junta that, in a telling move, handed over power to Clemente Yerovi Indaburu, a Guayaquil politician considered as the father of the banana boom. A Constituent Assembly was summoned and elected Otto Arosemena, Carlos Julio's cousin, as provisional president in November 1966. Beside of the drafting of a new Constitution, the most important event that occurred under Arosemena's presidency was the begin of oil drilling by Texaco in Lago Agrio (Amazonian province of Sucumbíos) canton.

Presidential elections were organized in June 1968. Once more, Velasco Ibarra, recently returned from his exile, prevailed in a heavily divided race. Velasco Ibarra took 33% of the vote compared to 31% for the liberal candidate and 30.5% for former president Ponce Enríque. In the concurrently held race for vice president (since 1948, president and vice president were elected on separate ballot), the liberal candidate prevailed. With no majority in Congress, a vulnerable economic situation and a persistent student agitation, Velasco Ibarra considered resigning. He, however, got the support of the military and staged in July 1970 a coup that officially give him full powers. The reality is that the power was by now detained behind the scenes by the military who aimed to control the growing oil manna. While basically a hostage of the army, Velasco Ibarra insisted to return to legality and to organize a fair presidential election in 1972. The frontrunner in that race was Assad Bucaram, a fierce demagogue from Guayaquil running under the CFP banner, who frightened both Coastal bourgeoisie and Sierran landowners by his violent diatribes against the “oligarchy”. Also worried about the likely victory of Bucaram, the army staged a coup and, once more, ousted Velasco Ibarra and forced him to flee to Panamá in February 1972, in the so-called Carnavalazo (the coup took place during the carnival).

Three populist figures: Velasco Ibarra, Guevara Moreno, Assad Bucaram

While generally described as a populist (he was a demagogue with extraordinary oratory skills and was the first Ecuadorian politician to use modern medias and to campaign throughout the country), Velasco Ibarra fundamentally differed from populists like Juan Perón and Getúlio Vargas in his inability (and his apparent lack of will) to build a mass party with strong roots in labor movement and civil society. He apparently founded his own party, the National Velasquist Federation (FNV), in 1960 for his penultimate attempt to win the presidency. The FNV looked like more a fan-club and a coalition of numerous and conflicting economic, social, and political interests than a real political organization. The various broad coalitions supporting successive Velasco Ibarra's candidacies lacked of ideological coherency and failed to unite themselves behind a clearly defined political project. From my understanding, politicians like Ponce Enríquez or Carlos Julio Arosemena backed Velasco in the only goal to promote their own political career. Note also that, while Velasco Ibarra backed Ponce Enríquez in the 1956 race, he almost entered in opposition to Ponce once this elected, probably with the intention to prepare the ground to his next presidential candidacy.

Velasco Ibarra also appeared unable to remove the constitutional ban on immediate presidential election and unwilling to extent the franchise to the illiterates (who were mostly of indigenous ethnicity). Velasco Ibarra also appeared to lack of a strong geographical base. He never hold a local office (like a mayoralty) and was Pichincha deputy for only one year (in 1933-1934). In his successive campaigns (if the results I found are correct; also I haven't the results for 1934 and 1940 races), he failed to capture the Pichincha province in the 1952 and 1968; in the three elections (1952, 1960, 1968) he won the Guayas province thanks probably to the support of local oligarchy. Finally, a fun fact which probably has an importance: in the four presidential elections of 1940, 1952, 1960, 1968, Velasco Ibarra won while he returned from foreign exile. Despite Velasco Ibarra's long political career, I haven't found yet a modern Ecuadorian politician claiming Velasco Ibarra's legacy.

The Concentration of Popular Forces (CFP) and its successive leaders, Carlos Guevara Moreno and Asaad Bucaram, represented a new type of populism. Raised in Guayaquil, Guevara Moreno studied in the Sorbonne (Paris) in the 1930s where he meet writer André Maurois and communist leader Paul Vaillant-Couturier and got involved in leftist agitation. He notably wrote articles for the communist newspaper L'Humanité and later fought in Spain in the International Brigades. Once he returned to Ecuador, he allied with Velasco Ibarra and became his interior minister. By then, he had made a complete political turnaround and, in his ministerial post, he persecuted socialist and communist opponents to Velasco Ibarra. In 1949, he set up his own political party, the CFP, which is sometimes described as a fascistic movement but actually lacked of ideological consistency. From my understanding, the CFP was the first truly mass party. It established a strong political machine in Guayaquil where it appealed to the proletariat, mostly constituted of migrants from the Sierra who move to the Guayas province to find jobs. In 1952, Guevara Moreno was elected mayor of Guayaquil (previously a liberal stronghold). By now, he was perceived as a political rival by Velasco Ibarra who forced him to go into exile. By 1956, he had returned to Ecuador and ran as presidential candidate. While he finished third with 24.5% at the national level, he won the province of Guayas (52.5%) and the adjacent province of Los Ríos (43%). Guevara Moreno's star began to wane and he was superseded by Assad Bucaram as leader of the CFP. He later attempted to build a new party, the Ecuadorian Revolutionary Popular Action (APRE), with limited success.

By contrast with Velasco Ibarra, Guevara Moreno, and the Arosemena cousins who came from an educated and well-off background (the Arosemena were remotely connected to the homonymous Panamanian political family), Assad Bucaram was the son of Lebanese migrants and represented the rising power of the Lebanese families who made their fortunes in quick time. Lebanese bourgeoisie was despised by the traditional bourgeoisie who generally regarded it as a bunch of uneducated nouveaux riches who made their fortunes under dubious means. Note however that a significant share of Lebanese businessmen managed to integrate itself in the Costa oligarchy; the most illustrious example is the current mayor of Guayaquil Jaime Nebot (full name, Jaime Nebot Saadi).

Anyways, Assad Bucaram was scorned by the Ecuadorian elite for his abrasive style and coarse language. Bucaram successfully used the contempt of the oligarchy toward him as a vote-winner and, at some time, became known as el patán de noble corazón (“the boor with a noble heart”). In 1960, Bucaram was elected prefect of the province of Guayas and, two years later, mayor of Guayaquil, a post in which he immediately rewarded his followers with municipal jobs. After the fall of the military dictatorship that have forced him to flee in exile, he was elected deputy to the Constituent Assembly in 1966 and, the following year, mayor of Guayaquil for the second time. With now a strong electoral base in the economic capital of Ecuador, he returned as prefect of the province of Guayas and prepared his presidential candidacy for 1972. The military coup will ruined his presidential ambitions.

The military dictatorship (1972-1979)

Described by Velasco Ibarra as a “group of coronelitos (little colonels) inspired by the reading of Lenin and Mao”, the new military dictatorship was led by the army colonel Guillermo Rodríguez Lara. This one established what he called a revolutionary nationalist government which implemented left-wing and progressive policies, largely similar to that of his Peruvian counterpart Juan Velasco Alvarado. The military government increased the share of public participation in oil drilling and used the huge flow of oil cash to finance a policy of import substitution industrialization. Ambitious programs of industrialization were led (building of the petroleum refinery in the city of Esmeraldas; electrification of the countryside) and the state bureaucracy largely expanded. The counterpart was however the alarming raise of the foreign debt which would later plunge the economy in turmoil.

Unlike the other Latin-American dictatorships of that era, Rodríguez Lara's regime was not really oppressive. Neither political parties nor labor unions were forbidden. Chilean opponents to Pinochet were even granted political asylum. Ecuador only joined the Operation Condor in 1978 and the country never experimented a bloody repression nor a policy of state terror. Also, there were no relevant guerrilla movement, which could be a bit surprising if one considers the high level of social and student agitation in the 1960s.

Rodríguez Lara was ousted in 1976 by a military coup that put a military junta in charge of the country. The junta took measures to curb the inflation and prepared the ground for the return of the democracy. A referendum was held in 1978 and approved a new constitution.

President and vice president were elected on the same ballot. Presidential term was five years (reduced to four years from 1984). As the military got tired of repeatedly having to oust Velasco Ibarra (who was still alive), they banned presidential reelection.

Digression about the incredibly messy Ecuadorian electoral system

The new constitution instituted an unicameral Congress with two different sorts of deputies (elected by party list proportional representation; seats were appointed using the largest remainder method):
- 12 national deputies were elected through a national vote.
- 57 provincial deputies were elected in 20 multi-member constituencies corresponding to the 20 provinces.

There were many problems with this system. Firstly, parties couldn't run a joint list (also, independents couldn't run). Secondly, the population varied hugely from one province to another. The three most populous provinces, Guayas, Pichincha, and Manabí concentrated respectively (roughly) 25%, 20%, and 10% of the total Ecuadorian population. In 1979, they have respectively 8, 6 and 5 seats. On the other hand, small Amazonian provinces (Oriente) and the Galápagos concentrated each less than 1% of the total Ecuadorian population but were bestowed one seat each. So, not only the small provinces were hugely overrepresented in Congress, but small parties had no interest to ran in these provinces and focused their efforts to win seats in the largest provinces.

Concrete example:
In the 1979 legislative elections, while the twelve registered parties ran in Guayas, in Pichincha, and in Manabí, only four parties ran for provincial deputies in Galápagos and in the Oriente. The CFP was the only party to ran candidates in every province. It won 2 of the 3 deputies of the province of El Oro province with only 32% of the valid votes and the only Napo deputy with 26%. The Democratic Left won 2 of the 3 deputies of the province of Imbabura with only 33% of the valid votes. The Social Christian Party elected one deputy in the province of Guayas where it took 7% of the valid votes.

Over the years, this system was changed countless times and became more and more complicated. In 1984, term length of national deputies was reduced from 5 to 4 years and term length of provincial deputies was reduced from 5 to 2 years. In the 1990s, reelection was permitted as well as joint lists; independents obtained the right to ran if they could form their own list and collect a required number of signatures. In 1998, national deputies were suppressed and provincial deputies' term length was extended to 4 year. That same year, the open-list system was introduced. The largest remainder method was replaced by D'Hondt method in 1998 or 2000; this last was ruled as unconstitutional in 2004 by the Supreme Court in a highly politicized move and replaced by the Imperiali method. For some reason, the Imperiali method was then replaced by the Webster method. Finally, national deputies were reintroduced in 2009.

How it works this year

15 national deputies are elected through a national vote.

116 provincial deputies are elected in multi-member constituencies corresponding to the 24 provinces; the three most populous provinces (Guayas, Pichincha, and Manabí) are, for the first time, divided in electoral districts: Guayas (23.99 % of the total Ecuadorian voters) and Pichincha (17.78 %) are each divided in four districts. Manabí (9.44%) in divided in two districts. The constituencies were officially created to correct the malapportionment and to force parties to field candidates from the countryside. However, the North-Quito constituency (738,765 inhabitants) elected 4 deputies only one more than the Pichincha district and its 337,096 inhabitants. This last district consists in three non-contiguous parts.

Finally, 6 deputies are elected from three districts by Ecuadorians living abroad (don't know when they were introduced).

Also, before I forget, I would like to mention that Ecuadorians will also vote to renew their 5 representatives to Andean Parliament (but nobody in Ecuador seems to care about).

Deputies are elected through open list proportional representation. Panachage is allowed but candidates generally dissuade the electors to use it (they apparently tend to choose more names than the actual number of seats). National deputies seats are allocated according to the Webster's method. Provincial deputies seats and seats of deputies representing Ecuadorian expatriates are allocated using the D'Hondt method. In the last 2009 legislative election, the three types of seats were allocated according to the Webster's method. Introduction of the D'Hondt method is widely seen as a way to favor officialist candidates and to deny parliamentary representation to minor parties.

Gender parity is required on every party's candidate list and the candidates must be ordered alternatively by gender on the ballot paper. Ftr, Ruptura's transsexual candidate, Diane Rodríguez (born Luis Benedicto) occupy a spot reserved for a man.

16 and 17-years-old will vote for the first time, as well as the military and the policemen. Voting is compulsory for every citizen between 18 and 65 years old and non-compulsory for Ecuadorians living abroad, military, policemen, illiterate and disabled people. In last elections, women and men were required to vote in separate polling stations; I don't know if this provision has been changed since.

Average Ecuadorian seems to understand nothing of his voting system. This partly explains the high level of blank and null ballots cast in legislative election (respectively 17.22% and 9.56% of the total votes cast in the 2009 election of national deputies) compared to the presidential election (6.26%/6.73%). The abstention rate was very similar: 24.27% for legislative election, 24.71% for presidential election.

A candidate (for presidential election as for legislative election) must be a member or an affiliate of a national registered political party. In order to be register a political party had to gather signatures from 1.5% of the total number of voters in the previous general election (corresponding to 157,947 signatures on national level for this election).

On last July, the whole registration process turned into a farce when it was revealed that several parties had forged hundreds of signatures. Voters discovered that they had been been registered to a political party without their consent. Most notably, Álvaro Noboa claimed that he had been register as a PAIS member (it is however important to mention that Noboa is a big AW). So, the National Electoral Council began to check all signatures only four months before the registration deadline. After the nullification of forged or duplicated signatures, some parties fell below the requisite 157,947 signatures threshold and lost time and money to collect the missing signatures. In the end, eight parties managed to keep their registration and four parties registered for the first time. Consequently, twelve parties registered this time, down from forty-two in last legislative elections. However, none of the disqualified parties were politically relevant.

The 1978-1979 presidential election

Note: it's unclear if illiterates could vote in this election; if they could, vote wasn't mandatory for them.

The natural candidate of the CFP was Asaad Bucaram. Unhappy with a possible victory of Bucaram, the military junta found a motive to disqualify Bucaram's candidacy. It introduced a provision in the Electoral Law stipulating that the parents of a presidential candidate must have been Ecuador nationals at the time of his birth. Now unable to ran, Bucaram threw his support behind his nephew by alliance, the 38-year old Jaime Roldós. This latter, a lawyer from Guayaquil, contrasted sharply with Bucaram's image as he was a rather intellectual figure with a low-profile. Bucaram made no mystery that he will de facto ruled the country if Roldós was elected. In fact, Roldós ran under the slogan “Roldós to presidency, Bucaram to power” (another slogan was La Fuerza del Cambio - The Force of the Change). Roldós' running mate was Osvaldo Hurtado, a 39 year-old political scientist from the Sierra. Hurtado was the leader of the Popular Democracy (DP), a Left Christian party founded in the 1960s by Catholic students. DP was one of the few Ecuadorian party with a strong ideological background.

The dictatorship-backed candidate was Sixto Durán Ballén, a former mayor of Quito (1970-1978). An architect from a well-off family with an accommodating personality, he was one of the founders in 1951 of the Social Christian Party (PSC), a party which described itself as a christian democrat movement. He ran with the support of the PSC and of the old Ecuadorian Conservative Party (PCE). At first, Durán Ballén attempted to build a broad anti-CFP coalition around his candidacy, but it disintegrated because of personal rivalries.

The candidate of the Ecuadorian Radical Liberal Party (PLRE), the heir of Eloy Alfaro's party (the logo of the PLRE is Alfaro's head), was at first Francisco Huerta. After his candidacy was ruled invalid on dubious grounds, he was replaced as PLRE presidential candidate by his own uncle, Raúl Clemente Huerta. A jurist from Guayaquil and a veteran politician - he ran in the 1956 presidential election when he was defeated by Camilo Ponce Enríquez – Huerta was generally considered as the candidate of the Guayaquil oligarchy. He was supported by the Ecuadorian Socialist Party (PSE). Founded in Quito in 1926, the PSE was throughout his history divided over whether allied with the Liberal Party or with the Communist Party. While it successfully build an electoral base, it failed to become a ruling party. Soon afterward, the ambitious Francisco Huerta left the party and found his own movement, the Democratic Party.

Rodrigo Borja, a lawyer from Quito, was the candidate of the Democratic Left (ID). ID was formed in 1970 by PLRE members unhappy with the alliance of their party with the president Velasco Ibarra. They were soon rejoined by members of the Socialist Party and the new party adopted a social-democrat and reformist platform. Similarly to DP, ID was a party with a strong ideological background and a reluctance to adopt a demagogical discourse.

Another breakaway of the PLRE, the Alfarist Radical Front (FRA), fielded his own candidate, Abdón Calderón. This latter, a lawyer from the Guayas province and a renown opponent to the military dictatorship, ran on an anti-corruption and populist platform.

Finally, the Ecuadorian Communist Party ran his own candidate, René Mauge, under the banner of its electoral coalition, the Popular Democratic Union (UPD). The Communist Party was founded in the 1920s but never achieved the status of a major party. With the Communist Party, the only somewhat relevant member of the UPD was the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Ecuador (PSRE), a castroist breakaway from the PSE.

The first round results were a shock for the military junta:

Jaime Roldós (CFP) 27.7%
Sixto Durán Ballén (PSC) 23.86%
Raúl Clemente Huerta (PLRE) 22.67%
Rodrigo Borja (ID) 12.01%
Abdón Calderón (FRA) 9.03%
René Mauge (UDP) 4.74%

Thanks to the CFP powerful machine in Guayas, Roldós won 50.43% in the most populous Ecuadorian province. He also managed to get strong results in Sierran provinces. Durán Ballén barely made the run-off despite the PLRE candidate's disappointing results in its past Coastal stronghold. He also probably suffered from Borja's competition in the Sierra. The ID candidate notably finished ahead in the province of Pichincha.

In panic, the military postponed several times the second round. Also, in November 1978, former presidential candidate Abdón Calderón was murdered, probably at the instigation of the interior minister. Under the pressure of Washington, the junta was forced to organize the run-off ten months after the first round.

Jaime Roldós (CFP) 68.49%
Sixto Durán Ballén (PSC) 31.51%

Roldós won in a landslide and swept all Ecuadorian provinces but one, the Sierran province of Loja which Durán Ballén won barely with 51%. In the concurrently held legislative election, the CFP won 29 deputies out of 69. ID became the second largest party in Congress with 15 seats. PCE won 10 seats while PLRE's result was disastrous (4 seats). PSC won 3 seats. DP and FRA didn't participated in the election. Despite the death in Argentine of its leader, the useless Velasquist National Federation (FNV) managed to won one seat. Assad Bucaram was elected president of the Congress with the support of the PCE and the PLRE

The Roldós presidency (1979-1981)

However, by this date, relations had become strained between Roldós and Bucaram. During the campaign, Roldós had proven he was a full-fledged politician and, once in office, refused to be Bucaram's puppet. The personal rivalry also translated on the political level. While Bucaram, now allied with the conservative and liberal parties, advocated an old-time clientelist and somewhat reactionary policy, Roldós intended to pursue a progressive agenda. The CFP soon divided between Bucaram's old guard and the young and educated followers of Roldós, those perceived as a bunch of opportunists and nicknamed the Chuchumecos by Assad Bucaram. In 1980, Roldós established his own party, People, Change and Democracy (PCD) while Bucaram turned into his nephew's fiercest enemy.

Despite Bucaram's obstructionism in Congress, Roldós launched a vast program of rural literacy program and implemented social reforms. He showed interest for indigenous language policy. He also confronted a short war with Peru over the demarcation of the border between Peru and Ecuador. Economic situation began to seriously deteriorate when Roldós and his wife died in an airplane crash on 24th May 1981. According to popular rumor, the crash was organized by the conservative oligarchy with the active support of Washington, unhappy with Roldós' advocacy of human rights in Latin America. These suspicions were reinforced when Panamanian strongman Omar Torrijos also in died in an airplane crash, two months only after Roldós' death.

Roldós is still a revered figure in Ecuador and is a bit the Ecuadorian Kennedy. One of the youngest president of Ecuador, he is perceived as a visionary statesman which renewed the politics of his country before his death in tragic circumstances. He is credited with the successful transition to democracy and his legacy is claimed by basically every politician on the left of the political spectrum. His own brother, León Roldós, his daughter, Martha Roldós, and his brother-in-law, Abdalá Bucaram, largely built their own political career on Roldós' legacy.

I hadn't intend to write on the pre-1979 period so it took me a lot of time to check whether my memory playing tricks on me. Logically, what follows will be quicker to wrote. I will write on the 1981-2007 period and then write on the remaining candidates.

No questions, comments, or complaints?

The Hurtado Presidency (1981-1984).

After the death of Jaime Roldós, the christian democrat vice president Osvaldo Hurtado was sworn in as president. He appointed Roldós's own brother, León Roldós (PCD), as new vice president. In November of 1981, the old populist leader Assad Bucaram died. The two most important populist parties had lost their leaders within a few months and were facing turbulent times. While the CFP was plagued by internal struggles over Bucaram's succession, the PCD soon divided as León Roldós proved to be an inept politician. Jaime Roldós' brother-in-law (and Assad's nephew), Abdalá Bucaram leave the PCD and set up his own political party, the Ecuadorian Roldosist Party (PRE), and adopted a clientelist and populist policy similar to that of the CFP.

With the decay of the populist parties, Hurtado found himself unable to build a reliable parliamentary majority. As his own party, the DP, hadn't participated in the 1979 legislative elections, it had only few deputies, all of them being defectors from other parties. He consequently had to form various precarious party coalitions to govern and to reward his new unreliable allies with administrative posts. After having governed with the support of the ID and the PCD, Hurtado later formed an unreliable coalition with the CFP and the Hurtado's Democratic Party (PD). As 1984 election approached, both the CFP and the PD withdraw their support.

Under his administration, a series of characteristics, defining the Ecuadorian political system until now, appeared or became permanent:
- the fragmentation of the political system between a highly number of parties.
- the weakness of the parties and their failure to transform into mass parties and to overcome the Sierra/Costa divide
- the low party loyalty. Deputies easily defect from a party to another during their term of office.
- endless disputes between the Congress and the executive. Deputies often resorted (or threatened to resort) to the impeachment of the ministers until the abolition of this practice in 1998.
- a high electoral volatility
- an insane level of legislative violence

Hurtado's efforts to form a stable majority were undermined by the dire economic situation. This one was caused by the high debt burden, a drop in oil price, and flooding in the Costa as a result of El Niño phenomena. Hurtado renegotiated the Ecuadorian debt with the IMF and implemented austerity measures that led to social unrest.

The 1984 election

The first election where the (mostly indigenous) illiterates were required to vote.

The candidate of the conservative right was a businessman of Guayaquil, León Febres Cordero. The scion of an illustrious Ecuadorian family and a flamboyant politician, “LFC” was a PSC deputy in the Congress and became famous in that post as a fierce opponent of President Hurtado. Febres Cordero managed to unite around his candidacy a coalition of several right-wing parties, the National Reconstruction Front, which notably included the two declining PCE and PLRE. Febres Cordero's running mate, Blasco Peñaherrera Padilla, was a member of the latter party. The PSC candidate ran under a neoliberal and populist platform with the slogan Pan, Techo, y Empleo (Bread, Housing, and Jobs).

Rodrigo Borja ran again as the candidate of the ID with the support of the PCD. He appeared as the front-runner candidate on the left side of the political spectrum. His running mate was Aquiles Rigail, a PCD member and a former labour minister in Roldós administration.

After infighting, Averroes Bucaram, Assad's son, stood out as the leader of the CFP. However, as he didn't meet the age requirement (35 years old) to run the CFP fielded Ángel Duarte Valverte (not much information about him).

Other notable candidates included Jaime Hurtado of the MPD, who was the first Afro-Ecuadorian to run in a presidential race; Jaime Aspiazu, a banker and businessman from the Costa, who was the candidate of the FRA instead of the party leader, Cecilia Calderón (Abdón Calderón's daughter) who was too young to run; and Francisco Huerta who ran under the banner of his PD.

First round:

Rodrigo Borja (ID) 28.73%
León Febres Cordero (PSC) 27.2%
Ángel Duarte (CFP) 13.52%
Jaime Hurtado (MPD) 7.33%
Jaime Aspiazu (FRA) 6.78%
Francisco Huerta (PD) 6.64%
Júlio César Trujillo (DP) 4.7%
René Mauge (FADI, the new name of the UDP) 4.26%
Manuel Salgado (PSE) 0.83%

Unsurprisingly, Borja did his best results in the Sierra and the Oriente. Febres Cordero's results are more interesting: he made his best result in the province of Guayas and proved he had successfully turned the Sierra-based PSC into a Costa-based party (but with still a significant presence in the Sierra). In the legislative election, ID became the largest party in Congress with 24 seats out of 71.

The municipal election in Guayaquil was very important. The city had been won in 1978 by a TV-journalist running under the tiny APRE (Guevara Moreno's second party) who was send in jail after he bankrupted the municipality. Three populist candidates confronted each other. They were Abdalá Bucaram (PRE), running on the legacy of his brother-in-law; Olfa Záccida de Bucaram (CFP), running on the legacy of his husband, Assad Bucaram; and Cecilia Calderón (FRA), running on the legacy of his father, Abdón. Abdalá Bucaram won easily. He will used the city of Guayaquil as a political base for his future national political career.

Runoff:

León Febres Cordero (PSC) 51.54%
Rodrigo Borja (ID) 48.46%

Borja was seen as the favorite in the run-off. However, he ran a bad campaign and was trounced by Febres Cordero in the presidential debate (“Look me in the eyes when you talk to me, Mr. Borja”). Thanks to the support of the CFP and the FRA, Febres Cordero won the runoff. He won only 5 provinces out of 20: the coastal provinces of Guayas (where he took 68%), Los Ríos, Manabí, and Bolívar, and the Sierran province of Tungurahua. The 1984 election is notable because it was the only presidential election in which both a clearly right-wing candidate and a clearly left-wing candidate qualified for the runoff.

The Febres Cordero presidency (1984-1988)

A fervent admirer of Ronald Reagan, Febres Cordero made no mystery of his intention to implement a harsh neoliberal agenda. His presidency turned into an impressive series of disasters. Despite having no majority in Congress, dominated by the ID-led Progressive Block, LFC chose to adopt a confrontational attitude. To prevent the opposition-appointed judges from taking office, he ordered the surrounding of the Supreme Court by army tanks. After several months of legislative paralysis, several deputies defected from the Progressive Block (allegedly after having been bribed by LFC) and permitted the president to constitute in 1985 a parliamentary majority uniting his own PSC, what remained of the PLRE and of the PCE, the two Costa-based populist CFP and FRA, and the various defectors. The newly elected president of the Congress, Averroes Bucaram, was soon afterward involved in a bizarre affair. A former CFP deputy attempted to shoot him during a session of the Congress and killed Bucaram's assistant. This incident could be see as anecdotal, but it was the most shocking of the many physical confrontations between Congressmen under LFC's presidency.

Political violence also occurred outside the Congress. From 1983, a small urban guerrilla group had emerged in Ecuador, the Eloy Alfaro Popular Armed Forces, generally referred as ¡Alfaro Vive, Carajo! (AVC). The group committed several hold-ups, stole Alfaro's sword in a museum, and, in August 1985, kidnapped Nahim Isaías, a banker friend of LFC who died in unclear circumstances (either killed by the guerrilla or by the police). The president brutally suppressed the guerrilla, ordering notably the use of torture. Numerous human rights violation were committed under LFC's presidency. LFC's supporters claim that the vigorous action of their champion prevented the Ecuador to follow the path of its Colombian and Peruvian neighbors. It is important to underline, however, that AVC could hardly be compared to the Shining Path or the FARC. It was a guerrilla with no roots in the countryside and whose members were divided over the recourse to armed struggle (they called to vote for Borja in the 1984 runoff). The AVC was linked to the M19, the less bloody Colombian guerrilla. On the contrary of many other Latin American countries, Ecuador experimented his worst human rights situation under a civil president and not under a military government.

Another act of political violence was the assassination in October 1984 of the head of the municipal police of Guayaquil, Merlín Arce. Mayor Abdalá Bucaram accused Jaime Toral, a politician linked to LFC. Toral was arrested the following year and charged with the kidnapping and the murder of Germán Zambrano, an aide to Bucaram. This last was, by now, LFC's archenemy. Rumors emerged that Bucaram extorted money from Guayaquil businessmen, on the cover of receiving “donations”. Fearing for his life, Bucaram fled to Panamá in September 1985. While in Panamá, he was involved in a preposterous case: Noriega's police arrested and tortured him on the ground of cocaine possession. Many believed it was a LFC's dirty trick. Anyways, it backlashed heavily as Bucaram acquired martyr status and was by now considered as LFC's biggest opponent.

The cuts of subsidies for basic food products, the reduction of the price controls and the free trade policy carried out by LFC caused social protests and growing discontent among the population. The modest improvement in the economy was annihilated by the world collapse of oil prices. In the 1986 midterm elections, while the PSC increased its number of seats, LFC lose his parliamentary majority as his tiny allies lose grounds. He suffered a major setback when his political reform (which would permit independents to run for election) was rejected by a large majority (69.5%). Despite losing 7 seats, ID remained the largest party in Congress with 17 deputies out of 70. The big winners were the leftist parties, especially the PSE whose parliamentary representation grow from 1 to 6 seats. By now, LFC faced an obstructionist Congress which harass his finance minister, the hardliner neoliberal Alberto Dahik, and finally remove him from office.

In March 1986, an air force general, Frank Vargas Pazzos accused the defense minister of corruption and organized two consecutive mutinies in order to (unsuccessfully) force him to resign. Vargas Pazzos was arrested and jailed but Congress voted his pardon. As LFC refused to enact the pardon, a group of paratroopers killed three of his bodyguards and briefly kidnapped him in January 1987 to force him to pardon Vargas Pazzos. As soon he was released, LFC escaped an impeachment vote in the Congress.

The final months of LFC in office were extremely painful. On 6 March 1987, an earthquake destroy the country's main pipeline nearly stopping oil exports during five months. With an economy in tatters, LFC had no choice but to default on debt servicing. He also renounced to any kind of neoliberal measure and increased public spending in order to reconstruct the country (and also to prepare the forthcoming elections).

No reaction :(

In the news:
The Electoral Court finally authorizes the broadcasting of one of Acosta's ad, El Reyecito y su Corte (The Petty King and his Court). The ad had been forbade by the Electoral Council because it attacks another candidate (note that the Electoral Council was faster to forbade Acosta's ad than the anti-Lasso La Feriatta).

Here the ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVGKnfJGhG4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVGKnfJGhG4)

The translation of the beginning (don't understand/how to translate the continuation).

Quote

- Verdeflex, the enemies of my revolution are everywhere!
- Who are they?
- Those that think differently!
- They are slow-witted [limitados, a term used by real-life Correa to described Mario Vargas Llosa]
- Infantile ecologists! [a term previously used by Correa]
- Gorditas horrorosas [an insult I don't know how translate it; it was also used by Correa against a journalist]
- Corrupt press!
- What will we do?
- Propaganda!

The 1988 election

Ten candidates ran in the presidential election. The most important were Rodrigo Borja, once again ID candidate; Sixto Durán Ballén, running as the PSC candidate with the support of the PCE; Abdalá Bucaram, who was permitted to return in Ecuador, as the PRE candidate; former renegade general Frank Vargas Pazzos, who was running as the candidate of the APRE with the support of the socialists on a populist and leftist platform; and Jamil Mahuad, the candidate of the DP.

First round results:
Rodrigo Borja (ID) 24.48%
Abdalá Bucaram (PRE) 17.61%
Sixto Durán Ballén (PSC) 14.72%
Frank Vargas Pazzos (APRE) 12.63%
Jamil Mahuad (DP) 11.57%
Ángel Duarte (CFP) 7.86%
Francisco Hurtado (MPD) 5.03%
three others under 5%

The result was a shock for the PSC. While Borja, unsurprisingly, managed to win the Sierra (34% in the Pichinca province), Bucaram managed to overtake Durán Ballén in the provinces of Guayas (37% against 19%) and Los Ríos (28.6% against 15.9%). The PSC candidate was probably hurt not only by the unpopularity of the incumbent PSC president, but also by his association with Quito and the Sierra. In the Sierra, he suffered from the strong competition of Mahuad who was the second most voted candidate behind Borja. In the municipal elections, DP won the Quito mayoralty, and Elsa Bucaram (PRE), Abdalá's sister, was elected mayor of Guayaquil.

Apparently, LFC let Bucaram returned with the secret hope he will divided the left-wing vote. This was a very bad appreciation of Bucaram's strong appeal to the Costa poor and his considerable talent as a campaigner. Bucaram successfully presented himself as a martyr who will avenge the “assassination” of his brother-in-law and as the champion of the poor against the “oligarchy” (La Fuerza de los Pobres [The Force of the Poor]). A charismatic and powerful showman, Bucaram didn't hesitate to ran a histrionic campaign, singing, dancing, insulting his enemies, and doing ridiculous impersonation of them. Not to mention his trollesque mustache.

His 1988 campaign ad is a good example of Bucaram's antics and demagogy: he sang himself its “soundtrack” and used his past torture in Panamá and arrest by Ecuadorian police in a very ridiculous way.

Here the ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiNOoI08-48 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiNOoI08-48)

Quote

The chorus (sorry for the bad translation):
That's why they call me crazy,
All the oligarchs,
That's why they call me crazy,
Because I cry together with my people (not sure of this line),

That's why they call me crazy,
And one day they banished me,
Inside a dark cell,
They strapped me down with their hands

Abdalá!
For the needy, Abdalá !
For the peasants, Abdalá !

Other important results: Vargas made a big score (31%) in his native Manabí and also in the Amazonian provinces of Napo and Pastaza. This is quite interesting because in the last election, Manabí was Gutiérrez's best Coastal province; the province of Napo is Gutiérrez's stronghold (he generally polls around 80% here).

In the legislative elections, ID won the strongest parliamentary representation (30 seats out of 71), the highest ever won by a party between 1979 and 2008. PRE and PSC each won 8 seats, DP 7 seats, and CFP 6 seats. Old liberal and conservative parties fell into irrelevance, as well as the PD and the FRA.

The election campaign between the two rounds was incredibly bitter and acrimonious. Bucaram successfully turn it into an insult contest, questioning the virility of his opponent and calling him a drunkard and an atheist. Consequently, Borja refused to participate in a TV-debate with Bucaram.

Second round results:
Rodrigo Borja (ID) 54%
Abdalá Bucaram (PRE) 46%

Borja's result was a bit disappointing considering the controversial nature of his opponent. Bucaram won every province of the Costa and none of the Sierra nor the Oriental or the Galápagos.

The Borja administration

Thanks to the large parliamentary representation of the ID-DP alliance in Congress, the Ecuador enjoyed legislative and political stability under the two first years of Borja in office. Borja negotiated with the AVC and the guerrilla group agreed to lay down its arms. However, because the economic situation continued to be dire, Borja was forced to implement some liberalization measures and a law that curbed the power of the trade unions. That policy angered both the PSC, which considered the reforms were too mild, and the left-wing parties, which saw Borja as a social traitor. Ecuadorian justice launched investigations into both Febres Cordero and Abdalá Bucaram into separate allegations of corruption. Bucaram fled back to Panamá.

The mid-term election was a disaster for the ID which fall from 30 to 11 seats. The PSC became the largest group in Congress and forged an alliance with the PRE, the CFP and other little parties. Averroes Bucaram (CFP) was elected president of the Congress and immediately announced that he will launched an impeachment vote against President Borja. This failed after a small party defected to Borja. Averroes Bucaram was ousted from the Congress presidency by policemen as he didn't want to give up it. The only concrete results of the PSC-PRE coalition in Congress was the drop of corruption charges against both Febres Cordero and Abdalá Bucaram (the Congress frequently intervene in justice affairs) and the return of Bucaram from his second exile in Panamá. The decision by the PSC-PRE-led majority to give up investigations on LFC and Bucaram provoke a bloody brawl in the Congress: a PRE Congressman threw an ashtray at former finance minister Dahik's head while Mahuad and another Congressman were hit by Abdalá's brother and another guy until they bled (don't know if I can post the video link of that).

The most important event of Borja administration occurred in June 1990 when thousands of indigenous simultaneously protested all across the country, demanding notably a land reform and the recognition of the indigenous rights. This marked the brutal emergence of the indigenous movement (dominated by the CONAIE) into the political arena. However, Pachakutik will only be formed in 1996. The Borja government failed to fulfill indigenous demands, while the growing of indigenous militancy frightened the economic elite. Anyways, at the end of his administration, Borja left a far better economic situation than when he came to power.

The 1992 election

No more than twelve candidates ran in this election. The incumbent ID party nominated Raúl Baca, a Quiteño who was mayor of Guayaquil under the dictatorship and president of the Congress in the 1980s, as its candidate.

The PSC was heavily divided over the nominee of its candidate. Angered by the nomination as presidential candidate of Febres Cordero's heir apparent Jaime Nebot - a former governor and deputy for Guayas closely connected to Guayaquil's business establishment -, Sixto Durán Ballén (former mayor of Quito and PSC presidential candidate in 1978-1979 and 1988) denounced the takeover of the PSC by LFC and his camarilla and joined a newly founded party, the United Republic Party (PUR). The PUR aimed at first to become a centrist party which would appealed to both the PSC and the ID voters. However, Durán Ballén chose to allied his new party with the Conservative Party and picked Alberto Dahik, a former LFC's minister of finance and an uncompromising neoliberal, as his running mate.

A bunch of populist candidates from the Costa also ran in the election. The situation was quite surreal as Abdalá Bucaram ran as the Roldosist Party's candidate, Averroes Bucaram was the CFP nominee, León Roldós ran as the Socialist Party's candidate, and a guy named Bolívar González was designated as the candidate of the Assad Bucaram Party, a split from the CFP led by Averroes' own brother, Avicena Bucaram. Frank Vargas Pazzos once again ran as the APRE's candidate. The DP, by now a center-right party, also fielded a candidate.

First round results:

Sixto Durán Ballén (PUR) 31.88%
Jaime Nebot (PSC) 25.03%
Abdalá Bucaram (PRE) 21.96%
Raúl Baca (ID) 8.45%
Frank Vargas Pazzos (APRE) 3.16%
León Roldós (PSE) 2.58%
all others under 2%

Durán Ballén performed better in the Sierra than in the Costa. The divide between the province of Pichincha and the province of Guayas was impressive. In the first one, he took 55.2% but only 17.4% in the latter. On the contrary, Nebot won 45.1% in the Guayas province and a poor 9.5% in the Pichincha province.

Abdalá Bucaram trounced all his populist competitors and made gains in every province except in the Guayas province where he fell from 37.1% (in 1988) to 28.2%. His bad results in that province were probably explained by the PRE's disastrous mismanagement of Guayaquil. Elsa Bucaram's administration was plagued by various scandals, notably the death of several children in a stampede during a city-organized Christmas gift distribution. In the concurrently held municipal election in Guayaquil, former president Febres Cordero (PSC) crushed the PRE candidate and put an end to decades of populist control on the most populous Ecuadorian city. He will successfully modernized Guayaquil and turned the city into a PSC stronghold. Shortly after the election, Elsa Bucaram fled to Panamá to escape prosecution. Nevertheless, Abdalá Bucaram made big gains in the rest of the Costa, and made his best result in the deprived province of Esmeraldas with 43.21%. All the other populist parties were now on life support. The Democratic Left was badly hurt by its record in government and was totally annihilated in the Costa.

With the two candidates running on a very similar platform (privatizations, economic liberalization, tax cuts), the candidates' personality became the main issue. While Durán Ballén was seen as an affable politician, Nebot was criticized for his abrasive style. He had previously made the headlines when he turned mad during a session of the Congress and unleashed a torrent of insults at another congressman.

Second round results:

Sixto Durán Ballén (PUR) 57.32%
Jaime Nebot (PSC) 42.68%

Nebot was defeated in a landslide, winning only three Costa provinces (Guayas, Manabí, and Los Ríos). Durán Ballén's huge results in the Pichincha (80.77%) and Azuay (79.07%) provinces suggested that he benefited from excellent transfers from left-wing voters. He also probably made big results in the capitals of the two provincs, Quito and Cuenca. Nebot won Guayas with 65.85% and Los Ríos with 61.52%.

The Durán Ballén's presidency

An old man, Durán Ballén delegated the direction of economic policy to Alberto Dahik, probably the most active vice president in Ecuador recent history. Dahik attempted to implement an ambitious economic liberalization program aiming at curbing the inflation and reducing the deficit. This agenda was, of course, heavily opposed by social and indigenous movements. However, with no majority of its own, the PUR-PCE coalition had also to deal with the PSC. Its leader, Febres Cordero, by now the most powerful politician in Ecuador as both mayor of Guayaquil and leader of the largest party in Congress, was unwilling to support what he called the “club of traitors”. In March 1993, a landslide disaster in the Azuay province didn't help the economy to recover. A constitutional referendum was organized in 1994. Every question was passed except the one over the control of state budget by the Congress which was rejected with 83% of the valid vote. It was telling on how much the Congress was an unpopular institution (this is still the case today).

In the 1994 midterm elections, Durán Ballén suffered a major setback. PUR's parliamentary representation fell to 2 seats, while the PSC increased its representation and chose to confront the president. The PSC forged an unholy alliance with the PRE and the MPD in order to impeach Dahik for misuse of public funds. The impeachment vote failed as the PRE chose to abstain. However, few days later, the president of the Supreme Court ordered the arrest of Dahik. This latter submitted his resignation and fled to Costa Rica.

Beside of Dahik's removal, Durán Ballén faced a war with Peru (the Cenepa War), which negatively impacted the economy, and the defeat of a referendum on various questions, notably a decentralization project, the privatization of the social security, and a ban on public service strikes. By that time, the PUR was became totally irrelevant and its remains merged with the PCE (itself on life support).

Hope this is readable and useful.

The 1996 election

By this time, the PUR had totally disintegrated and it didn't nominate a candidate to the presidency. Once again, Jaime Nebot and Abdalá Bucaram ran for their respective parties. Despite his setback in 1992, Vargas Pazzos ran for the third time to the presidency. The christian democratic DP supported former mayor of Quito (1988-1992) Rodrigo Paz. The real novelty was the candidacy of Freddy Ehlers. A TV-journalist, Ehlers ran on a left-wing and anti-corruption platform. Himself a White, he received the support of the newly founded indigenist Pachakutik and was the first presidential candidate to advocate a multiethnic society. He was also endorsed by the ID and the PS-FA (Socialist Party-Broad Front) which was founded in 1995 by the merger of the Socialist Party and the communist FADI (Broad Front of the Left).

1st round result:
Jaime Nebot (PSC) 27.17%
Abdalá Bucaram (PRE) 26.28%
Freddy Ehlers (MCNP) 20.61%
Rodrigo Paz (DP) 13.48%
Frank Vargas Pazzos (APRE) 4.93%
all others under 4%

In the mayoral elections, LFC was reelected mayor of Guayaquil in a landslide against the PRE candidate. In the legislative elections, the PSC remained the largest party in Congress (26 seats out of 82). The PRE increased its representation from 12 to 20 seats. The DP became the third largest party (12 seats), while Pachakutik made a disappointing showing (8 seats) and the ID fell from 7 to 5 seats. Two independents (the first since the return of democracy) were elected.

The two candidates in the second round were both from the Guayas province, an unprecedented situation since the return of democracy. Nebot won the province of Guayas (46.47%) while Bucaram won all other provinces of the Costa and did best in the underprivileged provinces of Esmeraldas (55.28%) and of Los Ríos (43.89%) thanks to his clientelistic networks and his demagogical promises to considerably expand housing construction (the so-called Un Solo Toque [“in just one shot”] program). He also made inroads in the Amazonian and won the province of Pastaza with 40.64%. Ehlers won the vast part of Sierran and Amazonian provinces but made poor results in the Costa.

Afterward, the campaign became acrimonious and numerous insults were traded between the two candidates. It is generally considered that Nebot's campaign was hampered by LFC's statements about Bucaram's voters who, according to him, had been a bunch of “pimps, prostitutes, and pot-smokers”. These statements ruined Nebot's attempts to label himself as the “sane” candidate against Bucaram, the self-described “Madman” (El Loco), who spent the campaign to throw insults at his rivals and to gave some sorts of concerts with the Uruguayan rock band Los Iracundos. Bucaram's running-mate, Rosalía Arteaga was also the target of misogynistic attacks. Nevertheless, Bucaram managed to negotiate the support of several indigenous communities leaders.

2nd round result:
Abdalá Bucaram (PRE) 54.47%
Jaime Nebot (PSC) 45.53%

Bucaram won every Ecuadorian province except the province of Guayas. Interestingly, the race was very disputed in the province of Pichincha, where Bucaram won with only 50.31%.

The Bucaram presidency, an epic fail (1996-1997)

Bucaram began his presidency in August 1996 with very high approval rating of 66%. Its presidency would finished in a complete mess in February 1997; at that time, Bucaram had a record-low approval rating of 7%. There are three main reasons to Bucaram's big failure.

Bucaram's personal style. While his histrionic style and his anti-oligarchic rants helped him to win the presidency, they proved counterproductive once Bucaram was in office. Ecuadorians were quickly tired of Bucaram's countless insane antics. These ranged from the shaving of his infamous Hitler mustache on a TV-show to the release of his album El loco que ama (“The Madman who loves”) which probably includes the worst cover of Jailhouse Rock ever.

Here, Bucaram performing it live in Guayaquil (not safe for epileptics).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgePnGHpA5s (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgePnGHpA5s)

Beside of his new singing career, he also appointed himself president of the Guayaquil football club Barcelona S.C. and claimed he would recruited Diego Maradona.

Second (and the most important) reason: the economic policy of Bucaram was heavily criticized. After promising to put an end to the neoliberal policy of his predecessor, he betrayed his election promises and hired Domingo Cavallo to elaborate a monetary convertibility plan similar to that Cavallo had implement in Argentina. In concrete terms this meant a sharp rise in the prices of gasoline, electricity, public transport, and telephone. The opportunity and the scale of the whole plan was questioned as Ecuador never experimented hyperinflation

Finally, a major problem was the Bucaram administration's widespread corruption and nepotism. At the begin of his term, Bucaram fired numerous public servants and replaced them by his own followers (who proved themselves incompetent and corrupt). Numerous members of his cabinet were recruited among his own family or his circle of friends. Notably, Adolfo Bucaram (Abdalá's own brother) was appointed minister of social affairs; the new finance minister was Abdalá's brother-in-law; Averroes Bucaram was appointed to a minor governmental post; a childhood friend of Abdalá, Alfredo Adum, was appointed to head the major ministry of Energy (which dealt with the oil money); a friend, Álvaro Noboa, was appointed chairman of the Junta Monetaria (the Ecuadorian Central Bank). Controversy also arose with the appointment of the former rebel general Frank Vargas Pazzos as interior minister.

Consequently, an insane number of corruption scandals occurred in the six-month Bucaram presidency. Among them:
- Bucaram's sister, Elsa, was permitted to return from his exile in Panamá after the charges of corruption against her were abruptly dropped.
- Bucaram's own son, Jacobo “Jacobito”, was accused to head parallel customs and to have become a millionaire in few weeks.
- The minister of education, who had been accused of plagiarism, was also involved in the so-called Mochila escolar (schoolbag) scandal: the Ecuadorian government ordered 1 million binders from a Colombian company to be freely distributed in schools; only 3,000 were delivered and irregularities were discovered in the contract award.
- The distribution of subsidized brand of milk (the so-called Abdalact) which was declared unfit for human consumption.
- The organization of a Telethon (hosted by Bucaram himself) that part of the sums raised mysteriously vanished.
- Álvaro Noboa was accused to use his position in government to settle the succession of his father, a banana tycoon, in his favour.

Downfall

After only five months in office, Bucaram had managed to alienate every social and economic sectors in Ecuador. The traditional oligarchy was angry at Bucaram's attacks on it. The trade unions were up in arms against the economic policy while progressive intelligentsia was frighten by Bucaram's style and feared that he could made a self-coup (as Fujimori in Peru). The CONAIE and Pachakutik viewed the new ministry of indigenous affairs as an organization dedicated to expand PRE's clientelistic networks. U.S. investors complained about the numerous bribes they were forced to pay and the U.S. ambassador himself denounced the widespread corruption in Ecuador. Nationalist sectors and the military were upset by the historical visit of Bucaram in Peru (the first visit of an Ecuadorian president in this country)
and saw the president as a “traitor”.

In the end of January 1997, protests and general strikes were organized with the support of trade unions, students, indigenous movements, and business organizations. On 5 February, two million Ecuadorians demonstrated all across the country, while former presidents Hurtado, Febres Cordero, and Borja united to call to Bucaram's impeachment. The next day, a broad alliance (PSC, ID, DP, Pachakutik, MPD, FRA) voted to oust Bucaram on the grounds of “physical and mental incapacity”. Ironically, the motive of the impeachment had nothing to do with Bucaram's alleged insanity. It was the only motive that needed only an absolute majority and not a two third majority.

Things went insane after both the president of the Congress, Fabián Alarcón (FRA), and the vice president Rosalía Arteaga proclaimed themselves as the new legitimate president. On the same time, Bucaram fled to Guayaquil where he claimed he was still the president and was the victim of a coup. The military, under General Paco Moncayo (a hero of the Cenepa War), intervened directly in the political process by announcing it no longer recognized Bucaram as president. While El Loco was compelled to flee once more to Panamá, Arteaga was sworn as the first female president of Ecuador. However, as Arteaga's party had no parliamentary representation, she was forced, after two days in office, to returned as vice president while Alarcón became interim president until August 1998.

A fascinating political figure, Bucaram should not be reduced to his outrageous style and his antics. He's probably one of the most intelligent Ecuadorian politicians. He managed to build a strong political organization basically out of nothing, to be elected mayor of Guayaquil at 32, to emerge as the only serious populist candidate and to survive exiles abroad and disastrous political records.

I feel compelled to provide at least one source in English about Bucaram's crazy style:
www.independent.co.uk/news/ten-ways-to-spot-if-your-leader-is-going-loco-1277401.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ten-ways-to-spot-if-your-leader-is-going-loco-1277401.html)

The 1998 election

The big favorite was Jamil Mahuad, a former mayor of Quito, and a veteran member of the christian democrat DP (he was the presidential candidate of the party in 1988 and won the highest presidential vote in the DP's history). Mahuad chose Gustavo Noboa, a prestigious academic from Guayaquil with a non-political reputation.

As Abdalá Bucaram was in exile in Panamá and as he couldn't returned as he was wanted for corruption, the PRE nominated the Guayaquil businessman Álvaro Noboa (no relation with Gustavo Noboa) as its candidate. Despite being considered as the richest man in Ecuador, Noboa labeled himself as “the candidate of the poor”. He was seen as a Bucaram's puppet and received the support of the moribund populist parties APRE and CFP. He selected the Sierran Alfredo Castillo, a former member of the communist party FADI and Marxist theorist, as his running-mate and ran on a demagogic platform (building of 200,000 housing in four years, creation of one million of jobs) with a pro-business orientation.

As former presidents were by now permitted to ran for reelection, the ID selected its historical leader Rodrigo Borja as presidential candidate.

As in 1996, Freddy Ehlers ran as the candidate of his own Citizen's Movement – New Country with the support of the CONAIE and of Pachakutik. His platform was very confuse as he was supported by both the leftist indigenous organizations and by the small-business sector of Guayaquil.

Vice-president Rosalía Arteaga ran as the candidate of his personal vehicle, the Independent Movement for an Authentic Republic (MIRA).

After having considered a third presidential candidacy, Jaime Nebot stated that the country was “ungovernable” and renounced to run; the PSC didn't field a candidate in the presidential election.

1st round results:

Jamil Mahuad (DP) 34.92%
Álvaro Noboa (PRE) 26.61%
Rodrigo Borja (ID) 16.12%
Freddy Ehlers (MCNP) 14.75%
Rosalía Arteaga (MIRA) 5.07%
María Eugenia Lima (MPD) 2.54%

Thanks to the lack of a PSC candidate, Mahuad won very similar results in the three regions. I have calculated it: Costa, 34.97%, Sierra, 35.04%, Oriente, 32.06%. In fact, he performed best in the province of Guayas (38%) than in his home turf, the province of Pichincha (37.12%).

By contrast, Noboa's results were far more regionalized: Costa, 43.12%, Sierra, 11.07%, Oriente, 24.48%. He won the province of Guayas (43.27%) but finished fourth in the province of Pichincha with a poor 7.87%. His best results were in the provinces of Esmeraldas (50.12%) and Los Ríos (49.57%). Thanks to the divide of the left-wing vote, he advanced to the runoff; he also probably got some PSC votes. He also benefited from the involvement of his wife in the humanitarian assistance to the victims of El Niño phenomenon.

Results for Borja: Costa (5.02%), Sierra (26.94%), Oriente (11.75%), best result in the province of Pichincha (33.08%); results for Ehlers: Costa (7.93%), Sierra (21%); Oriente (17.93%).

In the concurrently held legislative elections, the PSC lost his status of largest party in Congress (28 seats out of 121) to the DP (35 seats). As in the presidential election, the PRE showed a surprising resilience (24 seats) giving its disastrous record and the defection of many of its congressmen after the removal of Bucaram. The ID finished fourth with 18 seats while Pachakutik made a disappointing result with only 9 seats, only one more than in the previous Congress (note that the total number of deputies was raised from 82 to 121).

Mahuad received the support of Nebot, Borja, and Ehlers in the run-off. However, Pachakutik divided itself over the candidate that it would supported: some of its Amazonian militants chose to endorse Noboa. Mahuad campaigned on the specter of the return of Bucaram from his exile as shown by this hilarious anti-Noboa ad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VChuQRK6doM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VChuQRK6doM)

For his part, Noboa tried, with some successes, to distance himself from El Loco, to the great dismay of the latter.

2nd round results

Jamil Mahuad (DP) 51.17%
Álvaro Noboa (PRE) 48.83%

The results were very close and both Mahuad and Noboa claimed victory. While the electoral authorities recognized the victory of Mahuad, Noboa pretended (and still pretends) that he was the winner and that Mahuad stole the election through vote fraud. The Costa/Sierra divide reappeared as Mahuad won the Sierra with 66.12% (with strong results in the Pichincha and the Azuay provinces; respectively 73.38% and 71.22%) but made feeble gains in the Costa (37.3%), especially in the Guayas province where he took a negligible 0.25% gain between the two rounds. Noboa won the Costa vote (62.7%) and the Amazonian vote (53.23%) thanks to his strong result in the province of Sucumbíos (71.55%).

The Mahuad administration (1998-2000)

At first, Mahuad, thanks to his strong DP-PSC majority in the Congress, successfully passed a series of measures of privatization and of liberalization, a law creating a tax on capital movements, another one creating the Bono Solidario (solidarity bond, the forerunner of the BDH), and the ratification of a peace treaty with Peru ending years of territorial dispute with that country. However, things got worse as the economic situation became critical. Mahuad's administration proved unable to curb soaring inflation nor to stop the sharp fall of the national currency, the sucre, while the harsh austerity measures, the fall of world oil prices and the difficult recovery from the El Niño-induced flooding plunged many Ecuadorians into poverty. An estimated 10 percent of the population emigrated. To avoid the collapse of the whole bank system, Mahuad decreed a one-week closure of the banks and a freeze of bank accounts. This decision didn't prevented the fraudulent bankruptcy of several banks nor Ecuador from defaulting on its Brady bonds in September 1999.

While the CONAIE, the trade unions, and the left-wing parties opposed Mahuad's economic policy and organized protests and general strikes, the PSC and the Guayaquil's big business sector came into conflict with Mahuad over a prospected raise of taxes. A major scandal erupted when the banker Fernando Aspiazu, arrested for fraud, revealed that he had illegally funded Mahuad's presidential campaign. On the same time, the DP party began to divided over Mahuad's policy, with former president Osvaldo Hurtado leading the dissenting group.

In a desperate move, Mahuad announced on 9 January 2000, the abandonment of the sucre and the adoption of U.S. dollar as national currency. Strikes and indigenous protests erupted to protest the decision. On 21 January, Mahuad was ousted by a coup that brought to power a junta formed by Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez, the president of the CONAIE Antonio Vargas, and a former Supreme Court justice. Gutiérrez was a member of a group of low rank military who adhered to a nationalist and anti-oligarchic agenda and was upset by the dollarization and by the Mahuad's decision to lease the Manta Air Base (in province of Manabí) to the U.S. Army to help it to fight drug traffic in Colombia. After few hours in power, the army high command forced Gutiérrez to stand aside in favor of Defense Minister Carlos Mendoza. This latter put Gutiérrez under arrest and handed over power to vice president Gustavo Noboa. The Congress approved the removal of Mahuad and Noboa's inauguration as the new president.

The Noboa administration (2000-2003)

Despite being a non-political figure, Gustavo Noboa will proved to be one of the most effective Ecuadorian president since 1978. He kept the dollarization plan of his predecessor and successfully implemented it, thanks to the rise of the world oil prices. He skillfully granted amnesty to the putschists of the 21 January 2000, including Lucio Gutiérrez, and managed to kept the support of the military.

His term wasn't free from controversy. The construction of the Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados (Heavy Crude Oil Pipeline) triggered protests by indigenous and ecologist groups. Two successive finance ministers were forced to leave office. The first, Jorge Gallardo, resigned over allegations of irregularities when he was director of the Banco del Pacifico. His immediate successor, Carlos Julio Emanuel, who was appointed thanks to a secret deal with the PRE, was involved in a bribe scandal and resigned in June 2002 before fleeing to Panamá to escape prosecution (this turns into a running gag). Emanuel was later exonerated in 2010.

The 2000 municipal elections (now decorrelated from the general elections) saw the victory of Paco Moncayo (ID) in Quito and of Jaime Nebot (PSC) in Guayaquil after the retirement of Febres Cordero.

The 2002 election

11 candidates ran in that election.

Álvaro Noboa was fed up with Bucaram (still in exile in Panamá) and launched his own party, the Álvaro Noboa Independent Renewal Party (PRIAN). Electoral authorities rejected the new party's name on the ground that a party can't be named after a living person and the party was renamed Institutional Renewal Party of National Action (same acronym). Hilariously, the PRE use today Abdalá Bucaram's own head as the party logo without any problems. Noboa's movement was largely formed with the support of the Noboa Group, a conglomerate founded as a banana producing company, but which by now owned also banks, the local branch of Quaker Oats, shipping activities, etc. Álvaro Noboa also funded various philanthropic activities which he shameless used to buy votes.
Here the way Noboa campaigns (also lol at his total lack of charisma):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BdE40UmSR0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BdE40UmSR0)

Noboa advocated privatization, foreign investments, free trade and a business-friendly policy whilst making numerous demagogic promises. To sum up, according to Noboa, if he would be elected president, Ecuador will magically become a developed country where every inhabitant will have a car and a concrete house.

Former coup leader Lucio Gutiérrez ran under his newly found January 21 Patriotic Society Party (PSP). He received the support of the Pachakutik and of the MPD and ran on a anti-corruption and anti-oligarchic platform with strong leftist and nationalist tones. Gutiérrez described himself as a man of the center-left. His running-mate was a cardiologist from Guayaquil, Alfredo Palacio.

León Roldós leave the PS-FA to ran under the banner of his own independent party, the Citizens' Movement. He ran officially as the champion of the moderate left but was in fact the candidate of the political parties facing the threat of extinction. His motley coalition united the remnants of the populist CFP, the near-dead PCE which re-branded itself as “One New Option” (UNO), the useless PS-FA, the unpopular center-right DP, the Ehlers's MCNP (without Ehlers who managed to get elected to the useless Andean Parliament in 2002), and a small “liberal-radical” group named Fuerza Ecuador.

Rodrigo Borja ran for the fifth time as the ID candidate.

The PSC nominated its parliamentary leader Xavier Neira, a close ally and former minister of Febres Cordero, as its candidate. In the end of the 1980s Neira had spent 18 months in exile in Miami after his indictment in an embezzlement case. He has been expelled from the PSC around 2009 for another case of corruption.

The PRE nominated Abdalá Bucaram's own brother, Jacobo Bucaram, who had achieved fame in 1990 by punching Jamil Mahuad during a session of the Congress. His running-mate was Frank Vargas Pazzos whose party had by that time disappeared. The PRE's ad (which apparently date from then) was quite something

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQRxn1G6WXo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQRxn1G6WXo)

The text in the end (roughly translated): "Abdalá Bucaram's legal defense demands to the Ecuadorian political class his immediate return so he could save the poor of our fatherland".

Other notable candidates includes former president Osvaldo Hurtado, who ran under the banner of his newly founded Solidarity Fatherland Movement, and the former president of the CONAIE Antonio Vargas, who became the first indigenous candidate. He was supported by the indigenous evangelist Amauta Jatari (the forerunner of Amauta Yuyay).

1st round results:
Lucio Gutiérrez (PSP) 20.64%
Álvaro Noboa (PRIAN) 17.39%
León Roldós (MC) 15.4%
Rodrigo Borja (ID) 13.97%
Xavier Neira (PSC) 12.11%
Jacobo Bucaram (PRE) 11.92%
Jacinto Velásquez ("Independent Social Transformation") 3.71%
all others under 2%

While polls predicted a runoff between Noboa and Borja, Gutiérrez finished in a surprising first place. He had managed to win 49.8% of the Amazonian voting (thanks to his excellent result, 76.06%, in the province of Napo, where he was raised) and arrived ahead the six Amazonian provinces. He took 27.78% of the voting in the Sierra, where he finished ahead in 7 out of 10 provinces, and won a decent 11.63% of the vote of the Costa (he made his worst result in the province of Manabí, with only 6.35%).

Noboa won only two provinces (Manabí and the Sierran province of Carchi) but went into the run-off as his vote was relatively homogeneous throughout the country (i.e. Noboa's voting was the second less regionalized of the big candidates' voting). He won respectively 12.85%, 21.86%, and 15.49% of the voting of the Sierra, the Costa, and the Oriente.

Roldós' voting was very homogeneous compared to other candidates (S: 14.26%, C: 17.11%, O: 7.25%). He however failed to win a single province; his best result was in the Sierran province of Loja where he took 23.11%.

Borja's voting was heavily concentrated in the Sierra where he won 24.04% of the voting. He performed best in the provinces of Azuay (35.35%) and Pichincha (30%), the two only provinces he won, which suggested that he made his best results in urban areas (Quito and Cuenca). His results in the Costa (4.76%) and in the Oriente (7.48%) were horrible.

Neira's voting was basically the exact opposite of Borja's one: S: 5.19%; C: 19.37%; O: 3.92%. The PSC candidate won a single province, the province of Guayas, where he took 25.61%, a disappointing result. He suffered from the competition from both Noboa and Bucaram.

Bucaram's voting was: S: 4.75%; C: 18.95%; O: 10.15%. His best result was in the province of Esmeraldas (35.4%), where he suffered from the competition from both Noboa and Roldós. The province turned into a battlefield between the PRE and the PRIAN, with the MPD making inroads thanks to the division of the populist vote.

The legislative election results were very different. The PSC resumed its status of largest party with 24 deputies out of 100; the PRE and the ID had respectively 15 and 13 deputies, while the PRIAN was the fourth largest party in Congress with 10 deputies. Gutiérrez's PSP had only two deputies. Note that it's very difficult to provide the exact number of deputies for each party as there were several deputies elected on joint list, and as deputies easily jumped from party to party in the 2002-2006 legislature.

The campaign between the two rounds was, as usually, very tough. Noboa depicted Gutiérrez as a Communist who would turned Ecuador into a vassal of Venezuela. Gutiérrez himself attempted to moderate his discourse but relayed (apparently serious) accusations that children were exploited in Noboa's banana plantations.

2nd round results:
Lucio Gutiérrez (PSP) 54.79%
Álvaro Noboa (PRIAN) 45.21%

Noboa was crushed and won only four provinces (Guayas, Manabí, Esmeraldas, and Los Ríos), all in the Costa. He won this region with 63% of the voting and made his best result in the provinces of Guayas (67.47%) and Manabí (67.46%) where he probably benefited from excellent transfers from the PSC. Gutiérrez swept every provinces of the Sierra and the Oriente and also won the coastal province of El Oro (61.81%) and the Gálapagos (50.22%). With the exception of these latter province and of the province of Carchi he won with 56.39%, he won all other provinces with results over 60%. He won the Sierra with 73.13% and the Oriente with 76.59%. He managed to win his home-turf of Napo with 91.31% (Noboa only gained 1.19% here between the two rounds), the province of Azuay with 78.09%, and the province of Pichincha with 73.56%.

The Gutiérrez administration (2003-2005)

Note: by now, the Ecuadorian political scene became an indescribable mess with nonsensical alliances, dirty tricks, and insane personal vendettas. There are many things I don't understand (notably the MPD flips-flops). Also nobody seems to care about respecting constitutional law.

The new president, who was sworn in January 2003, didn't enjoyed a majority in the Congress as his PSP-MPD-Pachakutik coalition had theoretically 20 seats out of 100. The PSC, ID, PRIAN, and DP united to elect an ID-member as president of the Congress. At this time, the PSC was lead from Guayaquil by its parliamentary leader former president León Febres Cordero (despite the fact he practically never sat in Parliament, under the pretext that Quito's altitude was bad for his health). LFC committed his party to a personal vendetta against Gustavo Noboa. He accused the former president of mishandling Ecuador's foreign debt and said he will pursued him like a hungry dog (como perro con hambre). I don't really understand LFC's motives but the old conservative leader forced the judicial authorities to prosecute Noboa as a matter of urgency. Noboa quickly fled to Dominican Republic in July 2003.

Meanwhile, Gutiérrez quickly betrayed his electoral promises. He reached an agreement with the IMF over the implement of austerity measures and endorsed a free trade and pro-U.S. policy, calling himself the best friend and the best ally of the United States. In July 2003, the MPD and Pachakutik leave the government and entered in opposition to Gutiérrez. Beside of ideological considerations, Pachakutik was also angered with Gutiérrez's attempts to build his own political base in the indigenous countryside and now saw him as a political competitor. Things went worse when the leader of the CONAIE Leonidas Iza survived an assassination attempt, allegedly sponsored by Gutiérrez's administration. In May 2004, Gutiérrez annoyed Pachakutik even more by appointing Antonio Vargas as minister of Social Affairs. Vargas was seen by Pachakutik as a traitor as he left the party to join Amauta Jatari.

Then, Gutiérrez allied with the PSC to push his liberalization agenda. However, the PSC was quickly fed up with Gutiérrez to the point where LFC called to the removal of the president. LFC pretended that Gutiérrez's brother-in-law, Napoleón Villa (a retired police colonel who wielded a great deal of power from behind the scenes), was conspiring to kill him. The real motives of the PSC were apparently disagreements over who would benefited from the privatizations. The ID was also unhappy with the widespread corruption and nepotism in Gutiérrez's administration and united with the PSC and Pachakutik to get rid of Gutiérrez.

The feud between Gutiérrez and his opponents had repercussions on electoral and judicial authorities as a provision of the Constitution stated that the members of the Constitutional Tribunal (TC) should be appointed from lists nominated by the largest political parties. On February 2004, the PSC-dominated TC ruled out the D'Hondt method as unconstitutional. Then the PSC and the ID forced the adoption of the Imperiali method in Congress. This was largely seen as a means for the PSC to improve its representation in the October 2004 local elections and to annoy Gutiérrez whose party was promised to horrible results. Indeed, the PSP suffered disastrous results in the local elections, while the ID and the PSC keep their strongholds (respectively Quito and Cuenca, and Guayaquil).

On the begin of November 2004, a broad coalition of the PSC, Pachakutik, the ID, and the MPD attempted to impeach Gutiérrez, but failed to reach the required majority as several deputies defected.

Few days later, Gutiérrez set up his own nonsensical coalition grouping his tiny PSP, the PRIAN, the PRE, the DP, the officially far-leftist PS-FA, the CFP and its only deputy, the MPD (which no longer wanted to remove Gutiérrez; don't ask me why), and various defectors. The new majority immediately removed (illegally) members of the TC and of the Supreme Electoral Court and (illegally) appointed its followers instead (the so-called Pichicorte). In January 2005, the ID president of the Congress was also (illegally?) removed and replaced by a guy from the PRE during a session which was boycotted by the opposition.

The price to be paid for the PRE support to Gutiérrez was the return of Abdalá Bucaram from his exile in Panamá. The newly appointed TC (almost surely illegally) drop all charges against Bucaram (and also against Dahik – still in exile in Costa Rica since 1995 -, and against Gustavo Noboa). On 2nd April 2005, Abdalá Bucaram made a triumphant return to Guayaquil, called himself as mad as ever, and announced his intention to run in the next presidential election. Dahik and Noboa made a more discreet return.

By that time, the situation was chaotic. Demonstrations and counter-demonstrations have erupted. However, it seems that the return of the very unpopular Bucaram wiped out any hope for Gutiérrez to remain in power. Huge protests were organized in Quito and Guayaquil by the so-called forajidos, with the active support of the mayors Paco Moncayo (ID) and Jaime Nebot (PSC). Gutiérrez lost the support of the military and was finally (and illegally) removed by the Ecuadorian Congress on the grounds of “abandonment of the position”. The ousted president sought asylum in Brazil embassy in Quito. Meanwhile, as the Congress nullified the resolutions of the Pichicorte, Bucaram returned to Panamá after an epic Anabasis in which he escaped murder by “civilians armed by the oligarchy”. For his part, Dahik managed to escape to Costa Rica; he was later pardoned by Rafael Correa in a very controversial move. Gustavo Noboa failed to flee the country and was jailed. He was later amnestied by Correa despite the opposition of Alberto Acosta (by that time president of the Constituent Assembly).

Great fun reading your stuff but I'm going to try to condense it all into one paragraph. Tell me if you think this is a fair summary:

In the beginning there were two blocs in Ecuadorian politics, the Liberals in Guayaquil and on the coast and the Conservatives in Quito and in the interior. Both blocs have basically remained although the parties that represent them have shifted around. The Liberals were pro-business, free-marketers. Guayaquil and coast have more or less retained that ideology. The interior of the country is weirder. If you want to sum up all the different political movements from that region, the best you could probably do is to call them "illiberal." The original Conservative Party were pro-military, pro-church statists. In the middle of the twentieth century, the more First World style conservatives broke away from the Conservative Party to establish the Christian Social Party. Quickly, however, this party was embraced by former Liberals on the coast, who, again, had the same basic pro-business ideology. The mainland was then represented by a number of different movements, Velasco Ibarra and his supporters, various Falangist and quasi fascist parties, the vaguely populist CFP, and then in the 80s, the Democratic Left. For a while in the 80s it looked like Ecuador might develop into a more or less normal European style political system with the Christian democratic Social Christian Party on the right and the SI affiliated Democratic Left on the opposite side of the spectrum. However, Ecuador is still too poor for any party to remain popular after serving a term in office, so both of those parties largely collapsed. They still maintain a base among urban professionals in home cities of Guayaquil and Quito but most of the population moved on to flashier, more bombastic parties. The Social Christians split and the interior of the country threw their support to party dissident Sixto Durán Ballén. Of course, although he was a dissident conservative, he was still a conservative, and when he governed like one, his base totally evaporated. Since then, it's been a total clusterf--f, with the coast being represented by PRAIN, Gutierrez (for lack of anyone else), and now CREO. While the interior of the country was represented by Bucaram (for lack of anyone else), the DP, Gutierrez, and now Correa. The end result being that the coast is right-wing and the interior is left-wing, which is amusing because that's the opposite of the way it started, although Ecuador didn't really change, just what was considered left and right did.

Sorry, I think there are too much oversimplifications and some mistakes.

I probably cannot emphasis enough on the fact that illiterates couldn't vote before the 1970s. The elections between 1948 and 1968 concerned only a minority of the population. In 1968, if Wikipedia is correct, there were 1,200,000 electors for a population of 5,650,000 inhabitants. Arguably, the litterate population was concentrated in the big cities (Guayaquil, Quito, Cuenca). No conclusion can be drawn with regard to indigenous- and black-populated areas.
And before 1948, elections were rigged.

The Costa/Sierra divide is a bit caricaturated (I probably also fall into this trap). There is clearly a geographical, demographical, and economical reality behind the divide. But the two areas are far from being homogeneous: the urban Quito don't vote the same as the indigenous in the poor communities of the Chimborazo. The province of Esmeraldas with its poor and marginalized populations is a favorable ground for populist parties with strong anti-elite discourse, while the inhabitants of the affluent areas of Guayaquil preferred pro-business policies. Now slums have been more or less suppressed from Guayaquil, but they clearly not voted the same as the Guayaquil waterfront.

Quote from: WillipsBrighton on February 16, 2013, 09:08:03 PM

The interior of the country is weirder. If you want to sum up all the different political movements from that region, the best you could probably do is to call them "illiberal." The original Conservative Party were pro-military, pro-church statists.

True political parties with some kind of ideology emerged only in the 1920s. The main division between the Conservatives and the Liberals was over the economic policy (protectionism vs. free trade). I'm not sure that Conservatives were more statist than the Liberals. While the latter elaborated the first social laws, the first delegated to a private organization the education policy. As I stated above, illiterates couldn't vote so the Conservatives represented only the urban elite and the rich landowners.

Quote from: WillipsBrighton on February 16, 2013, 09:08:03 PM

In the middle of the twentieth century, the more First World style conservatives broke away from the Conservative Party to establish the Christian Social Party. ~~Quickly~~ After three decades, however, ~~this party was embraced by former Liberals on the coast, who, again, had the same basic pro-business ideology.~~ the Guayaquil businessmen chose to support the PSC rather than the moribund Liberal Party which failed to adapt to the end of the "limited" democracy

FYP

I have not that much information about the Ecuadorian politics before the 1970s, so labelling the old PSC as a First World style party looks like a bit audacious (especially, if you take in account the fact that elections concerned only a minority). Also, both Liberals and PSC advocated a pro-business policy because there were/are parties dominated by businessmen. Ideology has generally nothing to do with that. Then, there is a second fact I must insist upon: Ecuadorian parties were and are still largely disconnected from the civil society. This partly explains the insane level of political volatility. Even PAIS looks like more a party of notables rather than a true mass party.

Quote

The mainland was then represented by a number of different movements, Velasco Ibarra and his supporters, various Falangist and quasi fascist parties, the ~~vaguely~~ populist CFP, and then in the 80s, the Democratic Left.

After some research, Velasco Ibarra's support was mostly concentrated in the Guayas (so the coast). The fascism was never really a relevant ideology in Ecuador and couldn't develop in an environment where the "lumpen-proletariat" can't vote nor in a country where local identities were more important than the national identity. The fascistic (and not fascist) ARNE ran alone in the presidential election of 1968 and won only 3.75%. So fascist influence was negligible. I only mentioned the ARNE because it supported Velasco Ibarra; this illustrated how this last didn't care about ideology.

The CFP was a Costa-based party. It only won big in Sierra in 1978-1979 because other parties were either too much linked to the dictatorship or were unable to adapt to the extension of voting rights. As a arch-populist party which actively seek support from the poor sectors of Guayaquil and built a strong machine, it was probably advantaged over the other "populist" (personalist was probably a better definition of the Velasquist) and the elitist Conservative and Liberal parties.

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For a while in the 80s it looked like Ecuador might develop into a more or less normal European style political system with the Christian democratic Social Christian Party on the right and the SI affiliated Democratic Left on the opposite side of the spectrum. However, Ecuador is still too poor for any party to remain popular after serving a term in office, so both of those parties largely collapsed.

PSC won thanks to the temporary collapse of the populism caused by the consecutive deaths of Jaime Roldós and Assad Bucaram. Under Febres Cordero, it took a very populist tone and I wouln't compare it to European conservative parties.

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They still maintain a base among urban professionals in home cities of Guayaquil and Quito but most of the population moved on to flashier, more bombastic parties.

Guayaquil was a populist stronghold from the 1950s until 1992. The PSC base in the city wasn't enough strong to ensure the control of the municipality.

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The Social Christians split and the interior of the country threw their support to party dissident Sixto Durán Ballén. Of course, although he was a dissident conservative, he was still a conservative, and when he governed like one, his base totally evaporated.

Durán Ballén was elected thanks to the collapse of the ID and the divisions of the DP and because his rival was too heavily associated to Guayaquil. He left the PSC's strong machine and allied with the declining PCE and hadn't any true political machine behind him.

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Since then, it's been a total clusterf--f, with the coast being represented by PRAIN, Gutierrez (for lack of anyone else), and now CREO. While the interior of the country was represented by Bucaram (for lack of anyone else), the DP, Gutierrez, and now Correa.

Gutiérrez was heavily associated with the Amazonian and the Sierra and his big problem is the fact that he failed to make inroads in the Costa (the colour of his skin doesn't help here). I strongly disagree with the "for lack of anyone else". Gutiérrez is still very popular in the Amazonia and the poor rural areas of the Sierra and embodied the aspirations of these areas to be taken into account by the traditional political class. His party managed to near continuously progressed after it was in charge, a true exploit.

Bucaram's support was concentrated in the coast. While he achieved some success in winning votes in the Sierra and in the Oriente, his party is virtually dead in these two regions.

The big thing to follow is the result of Correa in the province of Guayas. In 2009, he won 44.62%, his weakest result in a coastal province. If polls predicted correctly, he should made important gains and have a best result here than in the traditional left-wing strongholds of the Azuay and the Pichincha.

Correa has received the support of the center-right prefect of Guayas, Jimmy Jairala. A former member of the PRE, Jairala had defeated Correa's own sister in 2009 for the prefectural election. He was then supported by Jaime Nebot. Correa and Jairala had apparently made a deal. Jairala supported Correa and his party in the upcoming election and Correa will support Jairala in his (possible) attempt to run for mayor of Guayaquil in 2014.

Some interesting links:

The website of the incompetent Electoral council on the 2009 results is down (404 error). Some weeks ago, the results of the 2011 Consulta could no longer been accessed.

Anyways, maps of the 2011 Consulta on parochial level

http://www.campusvirtual.uasb.edu.ec/uisa/index.php?view=article&catid=63%3Amapas-electorales-ecuador&id=115%3Aconsulta-y-referendum-2011&option=com_content&Itemid=102 (http://www.campusvirtual.uasb.edu.ec/uisa/index.php?view=article&catid=63%3Amapas-electorales-ecuador&id=115%3Aconsulta-y-referendum-2011&option=com_content&Itemid=102)

There are other maps on the site, notably maps of density population, percentage of indigenous and Afro-Ecuatorian population (on parochial level). Data is a bit old (2001).

http://www.campusvirtual.uasb.edu.ec/uisa/index.php?view=article&catid=62%3Amapas-sociales-ecuador&id=57%3Apoblacion&option=com_content&Itemid=101 (http://www.campusvirtual.uasb.edu.ec/uisa/index.php?view=article&catid=62%3Amapas-sociales-ecuador&id=57%3Apoblacion&option=com_content&Itemid=101)

The site of the INEC (National Institute of Statistics and Census) have many stuff:

http://www.inec.gob.ec/estadisticas/ (http://www.inec.gob.ec/estadisticas/)

Results of the 2010 Census can be found here (what is lacking the most is statistic on religious affiliation)
http://redatam.inec.gob.ec/cgibin/RpWebEngine.exe/PortalAction?&MODE=MAIN&BASE=CPV2010&MAIN=WebServerMain.inl
(http://redatam.inec.gob.ec/cgibin/RpWebEngine.exe/PortalAction?&MODE=MAIN&BASE=CPV2010&MAIN=WebServerMain.inl)

Maps of administrative divisions in 2011 (nothing more recent) in jpg and shapefile (don't know how copyright works)
http://www.inec.gob.ec/estadisticas/?option=com_content&view=article&id=299 (http://www.inec.gob.ec/estadisticas/?option=com_content&view=article&id=299)

The website of the newspaper Hoy has the results of the presidential election by province and the composition of Congress since 1978. Note that there were many errors.
http://www.hoy.com.ec/votebienec/estadisticas.html (http://www.hoy.com.ec/votebienec/estadisticas.html)

El Comercio has interesting profiles (in Spanish) of the eight candidates (see Perfiles on the right side of the page)
http://www.elcomercio.com/elecciones2013/ (http://www.elcomercio.com/elecciones2013/)

The CIDOB have very long biographies of every presidents since 1988 and also a biography of Guillermo Lasso (in Spanish).
http://www.cidob.org/es/documentacion/biografias_lideres_politicos/%28filtro%29/pais (http://www.cidob.org/es/documentacion/biografias_lideres_politicos/%28filtro%29/pais)

Time for electoral propaganda:

Correa's ad, "the Bicycle". Quite good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c-bQmKGsro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c-bQmKGsro)

Álvaro Noboa's crappy ad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmZinFj-WAc (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmZinFj-WAc)

Nelson Zavala's creepy ad, "the Truth"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17evgwacHg4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17evgwacHg4)

Abdalá Bucaram has made an ad with "Lionel Messi" to support Zavala called "I don't know". As usually with El Loco, this is totally surrealist. He denounces various plagiarism and corruption scandals. Notably, the head of the Central Bank, Pedro Delgado (Correa's own cousin) has been accused of faking his economic diploma. After supporting him, Correa abruptly drop him and called him a "traitor". Delgado fled to Miami.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvqr9aR5FRM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvqr9aR5FRM)

Rodas' spot, "New is best" (it was forbidden because it questioned the independence of the incompent Electoral Council)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynpptECMAfQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynpptECMAfQ)

Norman Wray's artsy spot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L632FtLf1bI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L632FtLf1bI)

As electoral signs of Ruptura were scribbled (mustache was added to one female candidate's head), the party chose to reply with self-mockery.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHj1XBpFoAQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHj1XBpFoAQ)

Filmaker Sebastián Cordero made two short films to support Ruptura (too much clever for the average voter)

The Cave
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQspU3mQfN8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQspU3mQfN8)

The Cake (much more funny)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG_qUScLEiM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG_qUScLEiM)

Lasso's ad are boring and uninteresting. I didn't find any recent ad of Lucio Gutiérrez.

The 2006 election

I'll skip the presidency of Alfredo Palacio, as he was a weak president. Under his short term the political parties concentrated themselves on the election preparation and hadn't time to lose to try to impeach Palacio. A record number of 13 candidates ran in this election.

León Roldós ran under the banner of his own new political party, Ethics and Democracy Network (RED) on a moderate left platform. He was supported by the ID and was considered as the favorite. His running-mate was Ramiro González, the incumbent prefect of Pichincha who played an important role in the fall of Gutiérrez by helping the organization of protests.

Thanks to an odd agreement with the PSC, Lucio Gutiérrez was cleared of all charges against him. However, he wasn't permitted to run for the presidential election and designed Gilmar Gutiérrez, his own brother, as the PSP candidate. Negotiations with the PRIAN and the PRE over a joint presidential candidacy failed and the three parties ran separately.

Álvaro Noboa once again ran under his personal vehicle, the PRIAN. His campaign took a messianic turn, as he proclaimed himself the “hero of God”. Catholic Church accused him of invoking God to heal sick voters. And, of course, the vote-buying continued to be widely used by Alvarito.

The PSC chose the attractive Barbie-like Cynthia Viteri as its candidate. She was a far more consensual figure than old bigwigs Febres Cordero and Jaime Nebot. She ran as the first woman with a real chance to win the presidency. However, there were cracks in the PSC and a growing opposition between LFC and Nebot. This latter had disagreed with the removal of Gutiérrez but, nevertheless, followed the orders of the former president.

A former economy minister in Palacio's government, Rafael Correa ran on a strong anti-establishment, anti-U.S., and very leftist platform. He was supported by his own tiny movement, the Alliance Proud and Sovereign Fatherland (Alliance PAIS, or AP), and by the PS-FA whose was by now anti-Gutiérrez. PAIS didn't field candidates in the concurrently held legislative election as Correa had previously stated that he will convene a Constituent Assembly. Correa's campaign was very arrogant as the candidate claimed he will be elected by the first round. Correa's running-mate was Lenín Moreno, who was apparently chosen only because he was a disabled man. Confined into a wheel chair since a physical aggression, Moreno is an advocate of the laugh therapy and the author of several books of jokes. He will prove to be an excellent and hugely popular vice-president.

After the disaster of the alliance with Gutiérrez, Pachakutik chose to field its own candidate, Luis Macas, the president of the CONAIE. Many inside the party opposed the decision to run alone and the ethnicist turn taken by the party leadership. Non indigenous leaders leave the party and chose to support either Correa or Roldós. Surprisingly, the “traitor” Antonio Vargas was reinstated into the party after a cleansing ceremony and designated as a candidate to the legislative election.

As its Líder Máximo was still in exile in Panamá, the PRE fielded its own candidate, Fernando Rosero, a corrupt old-fashioned politician. Marco Proaño, another corrupt and old-fashioned politician of the PRE, decided to leave it and to launch its own party, the Movement for the Democratic Vindication (MRD). He received the support of the liberation theologist Alberto Luna Tobar. The MPD and the CFP also fielded their own candidate.

1st round results:

Álvaro Noboa (PRIAN) 26.83%
Rafael Correa (PAIS) 22.84%
Gilmar Gutiérrez (PSP) 17.42%
León Roldós (RED) 14.84%
Cynthia Viteri (PSC) 9.63%
Luis Macas (PK) 2.19%
Fernando Rosero (PRE) 2.08%
Marco Proaño (MRD) 1.42%
Luis Villacís (MPD) 1.33%
all others under the 1%

The polls epically failed as they generally predicted a Correa/Roldós run-off. Their big mistake was the under-evaluation of the Gutiérrez voting. Noboa finished ahead in three coastal provinces (Guayas, Manabí, and Esmeraldas) and in the Sierran province of the Carchi. Correa won four Sierran provinces (notably the left-wing strongholds of the Pichincha and the Azuay), and the coastal province of El Oro. All other provinces were win by Gutiérrez who made big gains in the provinces of Bolívar (48.43%) and Los Ríos (45.57%). This proved that not only the PSP candidate was still hegemonic in the Amazonian provinces (75% in the Napo, 61.13% in the Orellana, 51.92% in the Sucumbíos) but that he was able to make inroads in a mostly non-indigenous province like Los Ríos (in 2010, 0.64% of indigenous people, but also 35.05% of Montubios, the highest concentration in Ecuador). The PSP resilience was one of the biggest surprise of the election. The other surprise was the horrible result of the PSC, whose candidate failed to win a single province and finished in a shocking 3rd position in the province of Guayas, behind Noboa and Correa. More generally, traditional parties (PK, PRE, MPD, CFP) suffered heavy losses.

The legislative election was also marked by the reject of traditional parties. The PRIAN became the largest party in Congress with 27 seats out of 101, it was followed by the PSP which make huge gains and won 23 seats. The PSC, ID, and PRE lost grounds while the CFP lost its parliamentary representation.

Noboa was considered as the probable winner of the second round. However, he made a poor campaign and proved, once more, he is a poor politician. He was probably hurt by the talks between the PRIAN and the PSP to form the new parliamentary majority. PSP's number one demand was the arrest of the “usurper” Alfredo Palacios. Ecuadorian voters were probably tired of the whole succession of politically-motivated trials.

2nd round results:

Rafael Correa (PAIS) 56.67%
Álvaro Noboa (PRIAN) 43.33%

Noboa only won the coastal provinces of Manabí (62.17%), Guayas (58.28%), and Esmeraldas (52.36%), and the vote of Ecuadorians abroad (53.93%).

OK. I prefer now return to what I have begin to write (I have too much things to say about this campaign).

The parties that supported Lasso's candidacy.

The Democratic Left (ID) suffered heavy losses in the 2006 legislative election and won only two seats (out of 130) in the National Constituent Assembly. By that time, the party had abandoned any clear ideology and was plagued by personal rivalries as the historical leader Rodrigo Borja retired from public life. Many members fled the party joined either PAIS. The mayor of Quito, Paco Moncayo, leave also the ID and set up his party, the Municipalist Movement for the National Integrity (MMIN), a vaguely center-left party made up of numerous mayors. In 2009, the only ID deputy elected was Andrés Páez. This year, he seek reelection on the CREO banner in Pichincha 1st constituency. The ID failed to renew its registration as two persons are both claiming being the legitimate president of the party. This is the first legislative election since the return of democracy without the ID. I must also mentioned that this is also the first election without the DP (now re-branded as the Christian Democratic Union, UDC), which failed to elect a single deputy since 2007. The party also lost registration as it failed to collect the required number of signatures.

Madera de Guerrero (MG) is a conservative provincial party of the Guayas. It was founded around 2007, after the electoral debacle of the PSC. Its leader is Jaime Nebot, who was fed up with Febres Cordero and his self-destruction strategy. Nebot chose to definitively renounce to national ambitions and to concentrate on his reelection as mayor of Guayaquil. He was soon joined by Cynthia Viteri. Madera de Guerrero emphasized the supposed specific Guayaquil's spirit and advocated a greater decentralization with sometimes separatist undertones. It's now the political arm of the Guayaquil's big business. Nebot is a very popular mayor and won reelection in a landslide in 2009 (68.44% against 29.01 for the PAIS candidate; note that many voters chose to vote for Correa in the presidential election and for Nebot in the concurrently held municipal election). Madera de Guerrero is the third largest party in the current National Assembly. In 2009, it reluctantly endorsed Álvaro Noboa. This year, it supported enthusiastically Guillermo Lasso and made a deal with CREO: CREO doesn't field candidates in the Guayas province.

The Social Christian Party (PSC) is now fighting for its survival. The party was hurt by the departure of Nebot and by the death of Febres Cordero in 2008. The PSC is now turning into a satellite of the MG as the party is nearly dead outside the province of Guayas and only managed to get deputies in that last province thanks to its agreement with the MG (as in 2009, the PSC and the MG ran a joint list; PSC ran candidates for national deputies, and CREO for provincial deputies. The party was even more weakened by the departure of Manabí bigwig Leonardo Viteri (who founded the MACHETE party) and other local caciques. It also run against CREO in some provinces and in the national deputies' race, which diminished its chance to get deputies elected outside the Guayas. Top MG-PSC candidates for national deputies are Cynthia Viteri and former TV journalist Carlos Vera, a vocal opponent to Correa which made also headlines for homophobic statements.

Álvaro Noboa
For the fifth time, the allegedly richest man in Ecuador ran for the presidential election. After his defeat in the 2006 presidential election, he failed to prevent Correa from summon a Constituent Assembly. He was elected deputy but couldn't take his seat as he refused to release his tax return. In the same election, the PRIAN was the big loser as its support totally collapsed (few months after its historic first place). Anyway, Noboa ran once more in 2009. By this time he was widely seen as an ineffective opponent to Correa and as an unelectable loser. He finished in a poor third place with only 11.41%, far behind Correa (51.99%), and Gutiérrez (28.24%).

There was big speculation over a fifth candidacy of Alvarito, as the banana tycoon was in trouble with the Ecuadorian IRS (headed by the hilariously named Carlos Marx Carrasco) and owed no less than $ 99,264,354 in back taxes. Noboa denounced the OAS “political persecution” by the IRS. In last October, he went to Miami and allegations of a possible exile surfaced. However, he returned to Ecuador, said that its own polls gave him as the only candidate who could force Correa into a run-off, and asked Lasso and Gutiérrez to withdrew their candidacy. Simultaneously, he tried to negotiate with the two other right-wing candidates. However, Lasso didn't want to deal with Noboa, while Gutiérrez mostly wanted to draft Alvarito's wife as his running-mate. Noboa refused as he absolutely desired to be the candidate for president and the talks quickly collapsed.

So Alvarito goes for an historical debacle. This time, he presented himself as a “center-left” politician and asked a Pachakutik member, Lourdes Tibán to be his running-mate. Tibán was apparently very surprised by this offer and rejected its (she is the Pachakutik-MPD top candidate for national deputies' election). As in 2009, Alvarito chose his own wife, Anabella Azin, as his running-mate. His platform is very vague and he promised to lower the retirement age, to keep Correa's social programs, and to reduce taxes for everybody (especially the income tax). He also said he will contact Rudolph Giuliani to fight crime in Ecuador (seriously) and tried to politically use the victory of the Barcelona Sporting Club (a soccer club of Guayaquil headed by Luis Noboa, Alvarito's own nephew) in the national championship.

Since June 2012, the PRIAN has begun to disintegrate. 5 deputies out of 7 left the party in protest of Noboa's autocratic style. The defectors seek reelection either with CREO, either with the PSP. PRIAN's top candidate in the election of national deputies is Silka Sánchez, a former Guayas deputy who is also the lawyer of Bananera Noboa (one of the numerous business of Alvarito). In second and third positions on the national list are respectively Roberto Ponce Noboa (Alvarito's cousin) and Eleana Azín Arce (Alvarito's sister-in-law). Also, Silka Sánchez managed to place his cousin Wilson Sánchez Zúñiga on the list. Noboa is supported by the living dead CFP and other tiny parties which nobody cares about.

Lucio Gutiérrez

Gutiérrez's PSP made a surprising good result in the 2006 elections. While it suffered from the huge popularity of Rafael Correa, it managed to appear as the most organized and the most efficient opposition party. In the 2007 election for Constituent Assembly, it managed to limit damage and won 19 deputies out of 130, becoming the largest opposition party. Lucio Gutiérrez appeared as a vocal and staunch opponent of Correa and criticized him over his supposed links with the Colombian FARC. In 2009, thanks to the absence of a candidate from the traditional right and to the hopelessness of Noboa, he won a strong 28.24% and has promising results in the Costa (29.3% in Manabí, 29.16% in Guayas) while progressing in the Sierra's poor areas and keeping his stranglehold on the Amazonian province (71.01% in Napo, 64.37% in Orellana, 56.22 in Pastaza). In the 2009 legislative election, the PSP kept its status of first opposition party with 19 deputies out of 124.

However, Gutiérrez seems now to have some problems. First, four deputies defected (three of them joined PAIS) which is the sign that the PSP, while considered as the best organized and structured Ecuadorian party, is probably weaker than currently assumed. Secondly, the Evangelical Indigenous Federation (FEINE) chose this time to not support Gutiérrez's candidacy. This could hurt him in the evangelical areas of the Chimborazo. More generally, Gutiérrez seems to be considered as outdated and the media doesn't focus on him as Lasso is now the novelty.

Gutiérrez ran on a very right-wing (if not far-right) platform. He wants to impose visas on foreigners and census all of them living in Ecuador. Immigration is a big problem in the Colombian border provinces (Esmeraldas, Carchi) where many Colombians refugees fled the civil war and the violence in their country. Insecurity and drug traffic developed here. Mexican drug cartels (especially the Sinaloa cartel) also tried to establish themselves in the coastal ports of Esmeraldas and Manta (in Manabí). In order to fight crimes, Gutiérrez proposed to allow private citizens to carry firearms. Other measures proposed include massive (and somewhat unrealistic) tax cut and the withdrawal from the ALBA. Gutiérrez had previously criticized grant of asylum to Assange, claiming that Correa wanted to use the hacker to rig the election. So, he would probably expelled Assange from Ecuadorian soil if elected.

Gutiérrez's running-mate is Perla Boyes, a former beauty queen from the province of Manabí with no consistent political past. She is an evangelical. Interestingly, Gutiérrez also considered the PRE candidate Nelson Zavala as a possible running-mate. The evangelical pastor said later he refused Gutiérrez's offer because there was a gay among Gutiérrez's staff. The PSP is the only party to support Gutiérrez's candidacy. PSP's top candidate on the national list is Gilmar Gutiérrez, Lucio's brother.

Rafael Correa

I haven't time to develop about him (but information is easily findable). Correa has said this will be his last presidential election. Don't know if this promise must be considered as a serious one. The incumbent vice president is Lenín Moreno the most popular politician in Ecuador. He used his position to promote an ambitious program to improve the situation of disable persons in Ecuador. His record was approved by the whole political class and he was even nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. He is now retiring, officially on grounds of health problems.

To succeed him, Correa made a very surprising choice and designated his minister of Coordination and Strategic Sectors Jorge Glas. This latter is a technocratic figure with a low name recognition and will be charged of political questions in the next Correa administration. This took the other candidates by surprise as the most part of them tried to choose a running-mate with a profile similar to Lenín Moreno (i.e. whose role would be to deal with consensual social issues).

Glas is also from the Guayas province, as Correa, which is a breach of the political tradition to constitute the presidential ticket with one member from the Costa and one from the Sierra. There are of course exceptions to the rule, but it was generally the fact of parties with few support in one of the two regions (in this election, the two candidates of the coastal populism).

Finally, Glas is embroiled in various controversies. One of them is the indictment of his father in an ugly rape case involving a minor. Ecuadorian government had been accused (don't know if it's true) to interfering in the trial. Another controversy erupted when Glas was accused to have plagiarized his thesis.

Glas' designation was badly welcomed by the PAIS supporters who wished that Moreno ran once again. There is much speculation about the choice of Correa. Some said that Glas is Correa's designated successor but many think that he was chosen because he's a low-profile politician who would not be a competitor to Correa.

Beside of the PAIS alliance, the following parties supported Correa's candidacy.

The Socialist Party – Broad Front (PS-FA)

Founded as the merger of the old Socialist Party (PSE) and of the communist Broad Front of the Left (FADI), the PS-FA officially defended a very left-wing orientation. In reality, the PS-FA, and before that the PSE, is a political vehicle which successively sell out to various populist/leftist politicians. It previously supported Franz Vargas Pazzos, León Roldós, Lucio Gutiérrez. In 2006, it bet on Correa which rewarded its leaders with minor government posts. Correa doesn't need it now and he only gave them top positions on the list to the Andean Parliament. PS-FA was disappointed to not have spots on PAIS lists for serious posts. So, the leader of the party, Rafael Quintero, managed to present lists in most provinces but it would be a miracle if a PS-FA candidate is elected deputy. A sector of the PS-FA chose to support the candidacy of Acosta.

The PS-FA is strongly linked to the National Federation of Peasants, Indigenous, and Black Organizations (FENOCIN). The FENOCIN is generally viewed as the long-time rival of the CONAIE. It was the only of the three big indigenous organizations to loyally support Correa. However, the organization is by now heavily divided as two men claimed to be the legitimate president. One of them advocated a distancing from the government.

Avanza

Avanza is a very bizarre movement. It was formed recently by Ramiro González, a former ID prefect of the Azuay and Roldós' running-mate in 2006, and now the head of the Social Security. Avanza self-described as a social-democrat movement, but it proved to be a party with very low membership criteria. There party list looks like a casting for a dumb reality-show. It includes:
- Saruka Rodríguez, a former beauty queen elected in 2009 as a PRE deputy
- Marco Proaño, a former PRE bigwig and joke candidate in the 2006 presidential election who is active in the Ecuadorian political life since the Mesozoic Era.
- Lady Mina (Miss Ecuador 2010)
- Karol Noboa, a model and TV-presenter
- Gerardo Morán, a techno-cumbia singer who was elected in 2009 as deputy for Bolívar under the banner of the Independent Movement Obras son Amores. He quickly left this party as seat as an independent. This year, he carpetbagged in the Pichincha province.
- Juan Carlos Estrada, a plastic surgeon
- Troy Alvarado, a musician
etc.
Avanza apparently used the equipment of the Social Security (notably ambulances) to campaign. It seems to be Ramiro González's personal vehicle. I read somewhere (but can't find where, so take this with a grain of salt) that González is a possible candidate in the 2017 presidential election.

Finally, I most evoke the funniest episode of the campaign:

The Don Burro candidacy

Avanza is not the only party to recruit celebrities to fill their lists. In fact this is a rather old phenomena. But this year, that is taking Ecuadorian politics to a new low. PSC tried to register the rapper Gerardo Mejía as candidate for the migrants in North America (this was rejected as Mejía was still registered as a PAIS member). Beside of the couple Dalo Bucaram - Gabriela Pazmiño, the PRE fielded Claudia Campusano, an actress known as Taxi Driver Rosita (Rosita la Taxista). PSP also selected actors as candidates. A newspaper calculated that 20% of the candidates running in the Guayas province were linked directly or indirectly to the television.

But the most widely publicized and criticized case was the selection of footballers Iván Hurtado, Ulises de la Cruz, and Agustín Delgado as candidates for PAIS. Even if PAIS fielded celebrities as candidates since 2007, it was seen as a further step toward the “starification” of the political life. It contrasted heavily with Correa's promises in 2006 to renew the political life and to prevent entertainers to run. Here a funny old Correa's ad denouncing that problem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7q-s48sEJw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7q-s48sEJw)

Things have changed since that time.

To protest the poor level of the candidates, a group of young people from Guayaquil attempted to register the candidacy of a donkey, “Don Burro” (Don Donkey) as candidate of the list 0. This turned into an Internet meme and the Twitter account of Don Burro quickly outnumbered in followers the Twitter account of the most part of political leaders. The organizers of the Don Burro said that they wanted to draw the attention of Ecuadorian citizens on the importance of voting and on the fact that politic must be a serious business, which is not the case in Ecuador. They also denounced the lack of independence of the electoral authority, the lack of concrete proposals from the candidates, and the absence of a real debate (Correa refused to participate in a debate between the eight candidates, stating that he would only participate in a debate in case of a run-off). Unfortunately, the Don Burro phenomenon faded away.

I'm currently moving and I don't know when I would have access to the Net again :(

Sorry for cannot answer the questions (I will make this later).

Partial results on the CNE site:
http://resultados.cne.gob.ec/Results.html?RaceID=1&UnitID=1&IsPS=0&LangID=0 (http://resultados.cne.gob.ec/Results.html?RaceID=1&UnitID=1&IsPS=0&LangID=0)

Lasso concedes defeat to Correa; he is now the only major opponent to Correa. Noboa contests the exit poll results and says that his own polls suggests he finished second and that he will force Correa into a second round.
Later, he will probably said that
1/ elections were rigged
2/ Lasso and Gutiérrez are responsible for Correa's victory.
Anyway, he apparently wanted to run a sixth time in 2017. Zavala also contested the exit polls as his own result doesn't reflect the demographic weight of the evangelists.

Transsexual candidate Diane Rodríguez protested because she was not permitted to vote in the reserved for women polling station. Also, Fabricio Correa (Rafael's own brother and vocal opponent) went to vote accompanied by a guy dressed in a Darth Vader's suit. This guy is really one of the most ridiculous Ecuadorian politicians.

Participación Ciudadana's rapid count for national deputies:

http://www.eluniverso.com/2013/02/17/1/1355/participacion-ciudadana-entrega-conteo-rapido-asambleistas.html (http://www.eluniverso.com/2013/02/17/1/1355/participacion-ciudadana-entrega-conteo-rapido-asambleistas.html)

PAIS 51.6%
CREO 11.5%
PSC 9.1%
PSP 5.9%
MPD-PK 4.8%
PRE 4.4%
SUMA 3.3%
Avanza 3%
PRIAN 2.9%
Ruptura 25 2.6%
PS-FA 0.8%

2009 results for national deputies

PAIS 43.07%
PSP 15.18%
PSC 13.29%
PRIAN 6.01%
PRE 4.46%
MPD 4.29%
RED 2.1%
MCND (César Montúfar's centrist party) 2.8%
MMIN (Moncayo's party) 1.93%
ID 1.72%
Pachakutik 1.47%
UDC 1.14%
many others under 1%

Mae Montaño (CREO), Cynthia Viteri (PSC), footballer Iván Hurtado (PAIS), Gilmar Gutiérrez (PSP), Lourdes Tibán (Pachakutik), and Dalo Bucaram (PRE) were elected. The Bucaram name still seduced a part of the voters.
SUMA gets jurist Ramiro Aguilar elected (at least there will be a competent deputy), so Rodas' good result looks like more than a personal vote.
Paco Moncayo is defeated. PRIAN is dead, as PS-FA.

Short analysis on results (in Spanish)
http://www.elcomercio.com/elecciones2013/analisis-AP-consolida-bastiones-Luis-Verdesoto-Alianza-Pais_0_868113271.html (http://www.elcomercio.com/elecciones2013/analisis-AP-consolida-bastiones-Luis-Verdesoto-Alianza-Pais_0_868113271.html)

One of the key of the election is the province of Guayas:
http://www.elcomercio.com/elecciones2013/Guayas-cambia-mapa-fuerzas-elecciones-resultados_0_868113240.html
(http://www.elcomercio.com/elecciones2013/Guayas-cambia-mapa-fuerzas-elecciones-resultados_0_868113240.html)

Quote from: WillipsBrighton on February 21, 2013, 02:12:13 AM

Confirmation that the one PRE person elected was Dalo Bucaram?

Yes. Bucaram was elected as a national deputy. The PRE performed better in election for national deputies (4.4%) than in the presidential election (1.18%). It had decent results in election for provincial deputies (8.62% in Esmeraldas, 5.88% in El Oro) but that is not enough to get a candidate elected. Dalo has said it was an error for the PRE to nominate Zavala as presidential candidate. Child-Beater Nelson is apparently angry at Dalo's comments and has announced today that he will leave the PRE. The PRE should transform into a circus with Abdalá Bucaram as the Auguste and Zavala as the whiteface clown...

Final results will be only published in the end of next March. The PSC claims electoral fraud in the Guayas 2nd district. Also, there are so much problems with the total number of abstainers that the CNE choose to publish it at the end of the counting.
http://www.hoy.com.ec/noticias-ecuador/el-cne-quito-de-su-web-los-datos-sobre-el-ausentismo-574697.html

And, of course, the CNE website is now once again down ::)

The three footballers are elected, but singer Gerardo Morán failed to be elected as Avanza deputy for the Pichincha. César Montúfar was also defeated in the province of Pichincha. He is a vocal opponent to the controversial law on the medias. María Paula Romo and Betty Amores were also defeated in the Pichincha; they were both pretty active deputies who running for reelection under the Ruptura 25 banner.

Ruptura 25 lost its parliamentary representation, as the PRIAN (good riddance), the PS-FA, and the MPD. The six seats won by the MPD-Pachakutik will all be held by a member of Pachakutik. There is speculation that now the MPD, which was in Parliament since the return of democracy, will now resort to violent opposition to Correa. The PRE, Ruptura 25, the PRIAN, and the PS-FA will absolutely require to win a least 4% of the valid votes in the 2014 provincial and municipal elections to keep their registration.

An article about the lack of political space for the traditional parties.
http://expreso.ec/expreso/plantillas/nota.aspx?idart=4155885&idcat=19308&tipo=2

Another article about the result for provincial deputies election (with a map at the end of the article). Note that several seats have not yet been allocated definitively.
http://www.elcomercio.com/elecciones2013/elecciones-Alianza-Pais-mapa-regional-hizo-verde-domingo_0_869313124.html

The PSC managed to elect a single deputy (out of 7) outside of the province of Guayas. The party should considered a merger either with Madera de Guerrero or CREO.
Avanza support is really weird.

Results with around 93% of votes counted (before the CNE website crashed):

Correa 56.67% (Costa: 61.6%, Sierra: 53.24%, Oriente: 36.24%) Best result: Gálapagos (64.23%). Worst result: Napo (25.44%)
Lasso 22.89% (C: 21.61%, S: 24.52%, O: 21.69%) Best result: Zamora Chinchipe (32.03%). Worst result: Azuay (16.83%)
Gutiérrez 6.89% (C: 4.55%, S: 7.69%, O: 23.92%). Best result: Napo (48.04%). Worst result: Santa Elena (1%)
Rodas 3.99% (C: 3.16%, S: 5.07%, O: 2.47%) Best result: Tungurahua (8.27%). Worst result: Napo (1.63%)
Noboa 3.68% (C: 4.82%, S: 2.64%, O: 1.98%) Best result: Santa Elena (8.61%). Worst result: Morona Santiago (1.12%)
Acosta 3.36% (C: 1.77%, S: 4.15%, O: 12.2%) Best result: Morona Santiago (27.03%). Worst result: Los Rios (1.16%)
Wray 1.35% (C: 0.76%, S: 2.04%, O: 0.81%) Best result: Pichincha (2.56%). Worst result: Zamora Chinchipe (0.47%)
Zavala 1.18% (C: 1.74%, S: 0.64%, O: 0.70%) Best result: Guayas (2.22%). Worst result: Zamora Chinchipe (0.32%)

Interestingly, Lasso performed better in the Sierra than in the Costa. With 24.19% in the province of Pichincha, he made here a better result than in the Guayas province (21.24%). He also won the best result for a right wing candidate in the Pichincha since 1998. Mahuad won then 37.12%.

Acosta's best result in the Costa is the province of Esmeraldas with 7.16%

Quote from: RodPresident on February 17, 2013, 07:57:00 PM

Why did people expected Gutiérrez to have a bad result in 2002? Maybe many reminded from Vargas Pazzos failures.

Because polls were unable to correctly poll the remote indigenous communities and the poor areas which Gutiérrez eventually won. The last polls published was: Noboa 17.2%, Borja 15%, Roldós 11.2%, Neira 8.4%, Gutiérrez 8.4%. Other polls gave more or less the same result. An unpublished poll, four days before the election, gave Borja 15.5%, Roldós 14.6%, Gutiérrez 12.6%, Noboa 12.4%, Neira 11.6%.

Quote

Why did Paco Moncayo never ran for President? In 2006, he would an electable candidate.

He was apparently not interested in running and preferred to concentrate on his job as mayor of Quito. Also, after the failure of the Gutiérrez presidency, Ecuadorian voters would probably have been reluctant to elect again a military-turned politician. Finally, Moncayo's then-party, the ID, had become a joke at that time.

Quote

How Correa was able to get a so strong result in 2006? He was unknown and a minister to a somewhat unpopular President. Roldós would be in a stronger position.

Correa began at something like 3% in the polls, but made a strong campaign and managed to appear as the candidate of the renewal, the most vocal opponent to the partidocracia and the most charismatic candidate on the left. He managed to gain the support of various intellectuals and political organizers who defected from the traditional left parties.

On the other hand, Roldós was more or less the candidate of the “old” left, most notably the ID which was discredited by its previous alliance with the PSC to remove Gutiérrez. The ID was also heavily divided and a sizable number part of its members rallied around Correa's candidacy. Roldós' own campaign manager, Gustavo Darquea, defected to Correa in the middle of the election campaign. Finally, Roldós was a rather uncharismatic and tired politician (it was his third presidential campaign).

Quote

Why did Febres Cordero never was prosecuted? As a controversial politician, he would be an interesting target to some of former presidents.

Febres Cordero was prosecuted after Borja came to power in 1988 for embezzlement but the charges were dropped in 1990 after the defeat of the ID in the mid-term election and the formation of the PSC-PRE coalition (it was at the same time that Abdalá Bucaram was permitted to return from his second exile in Panamá). Between 1990 and 2006, Febres Cordero was basically the most powerful man in Ecuador. Prosecuting him would be equivalent to political suicide. After Correa's outstanding victory and the collapse of the PSC, Correa instituted a truth commission to investigate the numerous human rights violations committed under Febres Cordero's regime but LFC died few after that.

Quote

Would Dalo Bucaram and his wife competitive (winning 10%+) in a presidential election?

I'm not sure for Dalo, but I think he would never play a major political role. He is good playing the victim but this would probably be insufficient to save the PRE from extinction. Also, his footballing career has left bad memories: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/1323482.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/1323482.stm)

Dalo's wife, Gabriela Pazmiño, looks like a figurehead who was only select as a candidate because:
1/ she's Abdalá's daughter-in-law (the PRE must be the most nepotistic party in the world as three of Abdalá's brothers were deputies, his sister was mayor of Guayaquil and deputy; Abdalá's wife ran the party when he was in exile in Panamá in the 1980s; Abdalá's three sons were all candidates for deputy that year)
2/ she is a famous TV-presenter.
She was constantly absent during the last legislature and made headlines because she continued to work on a public-owned TV channel

Final results with 100% of votes counted.

Abstention: 18.93% (24.72% in 2009)
Null: 7.23% of total votes casted (2009, 6.26%)
Blanks: 1.89% (2009, 6.74%)

National (% valid votes)
Correa 57.17% (+5.18)
Lasso22.68%
Gutiérrez 6.73% (-21.51)
Rodas 3.9%
Noboa 3.72% (-7.69)
Acosta 3.26% (-1.07, compared to Martha Roldós)
Norman Wray 1.31%
Zavala 1.23%

Sierra
Correa 53.23% (-1.46)
Lasso 24.5%
Gutiérrez 7.71% (-19.85)
Rodas 5.07%
Acosta 4.17% (-0.51)
Noboa 2.64% (-5.67)
Wray 2.04%
Zavala 0.64%

Costa
Correa 61.74% (+10.82)
Lasso 21.54%
Noboa 4.79% (-9.74)
Gutiérrez 4.53% (-22,34)
Rodas 3.12%
Zavala 1.78%
Acosta 1.75% (-2.33)
Wray 0.75%

Oriente
Correa 36.22% (+0.96)
Gutiérrez 23.87% (-31.14)
Lasso 21.78%
Acosta 12.17% (+8.77)
Rodas 2.47%
Noboa 1.98% (-2.37)
Wray 0.81%
Zavala 0.71%

Gálapagos
Correa 64.23% (+13.21)
Lasso 24.88%
Rodas 2.84%
Gutiérrez 2.38% (-25.2)
Acosta 2.24% (-3.45)
Noboa 1.98% (-11.5)
Zavala 0.79%
Wray 0.66%

Ecuadorians abroad

Correa 77.5% (+14.92)
Lasso 11.14%
Noboa 3.52% (-13.62)
Gutiérrez 2.47% (-8.53)
Acosta 2.38% (-3.84)
Rodas 1.28%
Zavala 0.89%
Wray 0.81%

Gender gap (M/F)
Correa 56.54% / 57.79%
Lasso 23.12% / 22.26%
Gutiérrez 7.3% / 6.17%
Rodas 3.41% / 4.37%
Noboa 3.93% / 3.52%
Acosta 3.3% / 3.22%
Wray 1.23% / 1.39%
Zavala 1.17% / 1.28%

Some random comments:

* Correa and Lasso are the only candidates to receive more votes than the total amount of null votes.

* Zavala made an ever worse result than Melba Jácome, the evangelical female pastor who ran in 2009 under the banner of the newly founded (and now defunct) Fertile Land Movement and made 1.35%. He finished sixth out of eight in his Guayaquil parish of Urdaneta, with 2.22%.

* Wray and Zavala received less votes than the total amount of blank votes, and also less than the required number of signatures for register. Correa trolled and said that the PRE and Ruptura forged their signatures.

* Rodas made better results with female voters in each of the 24 provinces.

* Correa had better support among women in every provinces, except the Guayas, the Gálapagos, the Napo (one of the few provinces where Gutiérrez performed better with female voters), and the Zamora Chinchipe.

* Lasso had better support among men in every province except the Guayas and the Gálapagos.

* Correa's support in Guayas jumped from 44.62% to 63.22%, the biggest increase (+18.6) at provincial level. Correa performed better in the suburbs of Guayaquil (Naranjal, 72.94%, Nobol, 70.2%, Yaguachi, 76.99%, Salitre 68.68%, Daule 65%) than in the city itself (“only” 60.98%).

* I have no idea why, but Correa's support collapsed in the Sierra province of Loja from 60.78% to 45.33% (-15.45). Lasso won here his fourth best result (31.32%).

* Correa's collapse in the Amazonian province of Zamora Chinchipe from 46.55% to 34.27% (-12.28%) is probably explained by the controversy over the big mining project in El Mirador. In the province, he won 34.27% (-12.28) against 32.03% for Lasso, and 18.21% for Acosta. This is Lasso's best province, and Acosta second best province. Lasso won 4 cantons (out of 9), including Zamora, the most populated city (L: 34.48%, C: 33.82%, A: 15.37%), while Acosta won the canton of Yacuambi (A: 45.03%, L: 24.48%, C: 23.06%). In the canton of El Pangui (seat of the El Mirador project), Correa won a weak 36.3%, against 31.79% for Acosta, and 22.04% for Lasso.

* Results in the Amazonian province of Morona Santiago are also very interesting: despite the impressive collapse of Gutiérrez's vote (from 56.47% to 17.03%), Lasso underperformed here with 18.29% and Correa lost few votes (from 33.77% to 33.53%). The big winner is Alberto Acosta who won his best result with 21.62%. He won 5 of the 12 cantons, most notably the canton of Taisha where he took 74.07%. Correa finished third with 7.32%, behind Gutiérrez (10.97%), his worst result in Ecuador. There is apparently some ethnic factor here, as these cantons are predominantly inhabited by the Shuar people (famous for its tradition of head shrinking). The most voted candidate in the election for the provincial deputies of Morona Santiago is the Shuar leader Pepe Acacho (Pachakutik), a prominent member of the CONAIE and a vocal opponent to the water law. He was briefly jailed on the grounds of “sabotage” and “terrorism” in 2011.

* In the adjacent Amazonian province of Pastaza, Gutiérrez suffered a devastating collapse, down from 56.22% to 13.06% (-43.17). Correa marginally improved his 2009 score (from 32.44% to 36.3%). Acosta won 7.69% (his third best result), while Lasso took here his third best result (31.34%). Gutiérrez won the Kichwa-populated canton of Arajuno in a highly contested four-way (Gutiérrez, 26.57%, Correa 24.46%, Lasso 24.43%, and Acosta 21.67%), while Lasso won the canton of Santa Clara (a bit less than the half of the inhabitants is indigenous according to the INEC website) with 36.38%. Correa won 30.13; Gutiérrez 22.41%, and Acosta only 6.44%. The two other cantons of the province were won by Correa.

* Unsurprisingly, Gutiérrez won the Kichwa-populated province of the Napo, his stronghold, with 48.04%, but down from 71.01% in 2009 (-22.97). Correa is second with 25.44% (worst province for him) compared to 21.77% in 2009 (+3.67). Lasso won 18% and Acosta 4.55%. Gutiérrez won the two predominantly indigenous-populated cantons of Tena (53.36%, his best result and also the place where he was raised) and Archidona, and the canton of Carlos Julio Arosemena (Mestizo, 49.18%; Indigenous 46.7%). Correa won the two remaining cantons: El Chaco (M: 81.65%, I: 11.56%), and Quijós (M: 83.95%, I: 6.52%).

* Beside of the 19 cantons (out of 221) previously mentioned, Correa lost two other cantons. Firstly, Cascales, in the province of Sucumbíos, the canton with the most important indigenous population (31.06%), which was won by Gutiérrez with 36.43% (Correa: 32.16, Lasso: 17.10%, and Acosta: 9.92%).

* Finally, Lasso won the tiny canton of Chambo in the Sierran province of Chimborazo. Correa took 42.01% in that province (-0.6%). The interesting fact here is the good score of Rodas (6.08%), his second best result. The support of the evangelical Amauta Yuyai seems to explain this result.

* Rodas' best result is in the province of Tungurahua (8.26%), thanks probably to the support of the protestant indigenous organizations.

Results with Ecuadorians abroad are very funny and four candidates made there their best performance.

* Zavala made his best result (by far) in Russia with 11.34% (97 voters). On the other hand, he failed to get a single vote in Panamá where Abdalá Bucaram resides.

* Wray made his best result in the Netherlands with 5.43% (192 voters).

* For some reason, Rodas won the vote in Malaysia with 37.5% (well, he took 6 of the 16 valid votes).

* Lasso won South Africa with 60% (10 voters), India (50% with 8 valid votes), and Peru (44.83%, 430 voters).

* Finally, Correa won 100% in Turkey and in Singapore (respectively 4 and 5 voters). He also won 87.79% in Cuba (1220 voters), and 76.86% in Venezuela (6687 voters), but also, perhaps more surprisingly, 84.85% in Spain (60.207 voters).

Thanks.

Now, the maps for the election of the 15 National Deputies. These one are, in my opinion, better and clearer.

For the record national results:
Allianza PAIS 52.31%
CREO 11.42%
PSC 8.96%
PSP 5.64%
MPD-Pachakutik 4.73%
PRE 4.51%
SUMA 3.22%
PRIAN 3%
Avanza 2.92%
Ruptura 2.48%
PS-FA 0.8%

()

PAIS map is very interesting. It looks like that the party does best in populous and economically dynamic provinces and underperforms in remote and rural provinces.

CREO map is a bit strange. It clearly made better results in the Sierra. I have probably misunderstood Lasso's candidacy by linking it to the old PSC. I think that he and CREO are more the heirs of the christian democrat DP.

No surprise with the PSC. Its electoral support is heavily concentrated in the province of the Guayas and the adjacent provinces (except of course the Azuay and the Cañar which were separated from Guayas by the Andes).

The PSP is really weak in the Costa and in the urban provinces of the Sierra (Azuay, Pichincha).

MPD/Pachakutik is totally absent from the Costal provinces outside of the Esmeraldas. Its support is unsurprisingly stronger in indigenous provinces.

The divide between the Costa and the Sierra is apparent on the PRE map. Note that this map is somewhat different from the map of the presidential vote. I suspect many traditional PRE voters to have vote Correa in the presidential vote and to pick Dalo Bucaram on their list of national deputies.

()

SUMA vote is concentrated on the central Sierra, both in the rural provinces and in the Pichincha, seat of the capital Quito. Best result was in the Tungurahua. IIRC it's a province which is traditionally more right wing than the other Sierran provinces. There is also probably a sizeable number of evangelicals.

The PRIAN map is the Costal provinces plus the central Sierra.

Avanza map is, well ..., weird. I guess this new party is mostly made up of local caciques with no cohesion between them.

Ruptura is very stereotyped. This is basically the Sierra (with biggest results in urban cities of Quito, Cuenca, and Ambato) plus the Amazonian province of Pastaza.

The PS-FA map looks like a bit the PSP map with strongest results in the Amazonian and indigenous provinces and lowest results in the Costa.

In the news:

Nelson Zavala was fined $3.180 and deprived of his political rights for one year. The Supreme Electoral Court sentenced him because of his homophobic comments. His candidacy was really an epic failure.

Also, Abdalá Bucaram said, as his son, that Zavala was a bad candidate. He blustered about the fact that the PRE is the only party whose legislative result is four times its presidential result. Btw, the PRE hold its congress last week in Panamá and is actively preparing the next municipal elections.

By contrast, the PRIAN and Álvaro Noboa seem to have vanished. The party's website wasn't updated since the election.

The new airport of Quito was inaugurated few weeks ago. A controversy broke out as the inauguration plaque mentions Rafael Correa and mayor of Quito Augusto Barrera (PAIS) but not former mayor Paco Moncayo who played a big role in the airport project. Ruptura 25 considered a Moncayo's candidacy for the next Quito municipal election, but he is apparently reluctant to run once more. Barrera will probably run for reelection but he could face Ramiro González, the leader of Avanza and formerly a prefect of the Pichincha province.

*Bump*

Álvaro Noboa left Ecuador just after deleting his Twitter account.
http://www.elcomercio.com/politica/Alvaro-Noboa-salio-pais-Prian_0_887311412.html (http://www.elcomercio.com/politica/Alvaro-Noboa-salio-pais-Prian_0_887311412.html)

Nobody - even not his lawyer Sylka Sánchez - knows where he is now. Wednesday, a judge cancelled a previous ban on Noboa from leaving the country. The ban was associated with Noboa's problems with the Ecuadorian IRS. Sánchez indicated that she doesn't know where Noboa is, but that she is sure Noboa has left the country. She also indicated that Noboa doesn't try to flee justice and is abroad for his business. It doesn't explain why he deleted his Twitter account.

Is there in the world an electoral body more incompetent than the CNE?

Not only the incompetent Consejo Nacional Electoral has still not yet proclaimed the results (more than a month after the poll), but its members decided it's time for them to take a week off. ::)

http://www.elcomercio.com/politica/Criticas-CNE-semana-vacancia-elecciones_0_886711361.html (http://www.elcomercio.com/politica/Criticas-CNE-semana-vacancia-elecciones_0_886711361.html)

The Electoral Court rejected Zavala's appeal.
http://www.elcomercio.com/politica/TCE-ratifico-sancion-Nelson-Zavala_0_885511730.html (http://www.elcomercio.com/politica/TCE-ratifico-sancion-Nelson-Zavala_0_885511730.html)
He will have to pay $3.180 and cannot vote nor seek a public office for a year.

The PRE over-performed among the convicts

http://www.eluniverso.com/2013/03/17/1/1355/tendencia-diferente-afin-pre-marca-voto-carcelario.html (http://www.eluniverso.com/2013/03/17/1/1355/tendencia-diferente-afin-pre-marca-voto-carcelario.html)

8.963 convicts were entitled to participate in the voting. The PRE candidates made big scores in the jails. Zavala even reached 28% in a precinct while the National Deputies PRE list made an impressive 40% in the men's prison of Ambato (Tungurahua). The party had historically a special appeal to the illiterates and the under-educated (who are, arguably over-represented in prisons).

This seriously need an update as I have forgotten to give the results for provincial deputies:

Alianza PAIS 86 (+ the 6 seats for Ecuadorian aboard)
CREO 9
PSC 5
Avanza 5
PSP 4
MPD-Pachakutik 4
Regional movements 3

NGO Participación Ciudadana (Citizens' Participation) has calculated how the provincial seats would have been allocated if the 2009 electoral law was still in use (http://www.elcomercio.com/politica/DHondt-politica-Alianza_Pais-legisladores-CNE_0_905909402.html) - i.e. no electoral districts, and Webster method instead of D'Hondt method (remember, Webster method is still used for allocating the national deputies' seats):

Alianza PAIS 68
CREO 16
PSC 7
Avanza 7
PSP 6
MPD-Pachakutik 6
PRE 1
PRIAN 1
Regional movements 4

Under this scenario, PAIS failed to reach the 2/3 majority it currently held. Also, the 2/3 majority could be at risk if deputies acted like in previous legislature:

Composition of last legislature in 2009
()

Composition of last legislature in 2012
()
source (http://www.telegrafo.com.ec/actualidad/item/comicios-estimulan-camisetazos.html)

It's important to outline that there is no by-elections in Ecuador. If a deputy dies or resigns, he's to be replaced by his alternate (elected on the same list). So, there were numerous defections during the last legislature. The growth of the other/independent group is quite hilarious. This last was roughly made up of three categories of deputies:
1/ the deputies elected as members of a provincial movement who either opposed Correa either traded their support in exchange of some pork/legislative position
2/ the deputies elected as members of PAIS who defected and became among the staunchest opponents to Correa (these includes Ruptura 25 leaders Betty Amores and María Paula Romo)
3/ the deputies elected as members of anti-Correa parties who joined the pro-government majority in exchange of some pork/legislative position. Their support however tended to be unreliable.

So, it would be interesting to see if the next legislature will take the same line

Pachakutik deputy (reelected in last February) from Zamora Chinchipe (Amazonia) Cléver Jiménez had been sentenced to 18 months in jail with two other militants for insult to the President. More here (http://www.ifex.org/ecuador/2013/04/19/slander_president) (in English)

The Ecuadorian Government discovered that Álvaro Noboa fled the country before Judge Ivonne Hernández lifted the ban on Noboa from leaving Ecuador (http://www.elcomercio.com/politica/Alvaro-Noboa-SRI-Carlos-Marx-Carrasco_0_903509828.html). So, now, he will have even more problems if he attempt to return to Ecuador. PRIAN's future looks bleak.

A last update:

()

The new president of the National Assembly is Gabriela Rivadeneira, from the Sierran province of Imbabura. At 29 years of age, she became the youngest president of the legislative body in Ecuadorian history. She was PAIS top leader in the election for national deputies. First vice president is Rosana Alvarado (PAIS) and the second vice president is Marcela Aguiñaga (PAIS), a former Environment minister. So the presidium of the new Assembly is all-female.

Rivadeneira is presented by Ecuadorian official press agency as the first woman to preside the Ecuadorian legislative body, which is not totally true. In 2000, Susana González, (PSC-turned independent) presided the Ecuadorian Congress for 22 days before her election was nullified by the Ecuadorian justice. Also, as vice-president of the Congress, Cynthia Vinteri presided the Congress in an acting capacity in the session in which Lucio Gutiérrez was removed from office.

Rivadeneira succeeded to Fernando Cordero, a veteran politician, who despite being reelected resigned his seat to take the presidency of the Ecuadorian Social Security Institute (IESS). He succeeded in that later post to Ramiro González (leader of the Avanza Party) which was appointed minister for Industries. There were other changes in the cabinet, but the most important is probably the creation of a ministry of External Trade. This could be seen as a blow to Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño (reappointed to his post) who until then was also entrusted with responsibility for external trade. Patiño's tenure is heavily criticized as his administration faced various scandals (notably the discovery of cocaine in diplomatic bags by Italian police in 2011 and the discovery of traces of cocaine on a bust of President Eloy Alfaro before its moving from Ecuador to the Ecuadorian Embassy in Canada).

The most recent and hilarious scandal (occurred after Patiño's reconfirmation) is the diplomatic crisis with Peru that occurred the last few weeks after the Ecuadorian ambassador in Lima, Rodrigo Riofrío, turned mad in a Peruvian supermarket and fought with two women, hitting them with a magazine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tNUjJ3LhBY).

At first, Correa supported the Ecuadorian ambassador, arguing it was him who was assaulted first. However, it appeared that Riofrío provoked the fight by making racist comments to the women. Finally, both Riofrío and the Peruvian ambassador to Quito were repelled and replaced. Ollanta Humala will be present to Correa's investiture, so the diplomatic crisis is over.

The Socialist Party (PS-FA) is now deeply divided between two factions, one supportive of keeping the alliance with PAIS and the other that argued the party was badly rewarded for its long-time support to Correa and should join the opposition. The National Congress of the party turned into a brawl as the pro-Correa faction with the help of the police prevented Enrique Ayala Mora, a leader of the other faction to participate in the party's internal elections (http://www.elcomercio.com/politica/Socialistas-dividen-congreso-Guaranda_0_913108827.html).

Speaking of the PS-FA, lol at their ad in the last election (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZWPH4yUBYE) (also quite premonitory).

At the same time, the FENOCIN, one of the biggest indigenous confederation, considers abandoning its close alliance with the PS-FA. The FENOCIN is itself divided along the same lines as the PS-FA as two guys claim to be president of the FENOCIN.

In last month, Dalo Bucaram acted like an asshole (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkU0xtPnHCM) during the accreditation of the newly elected deputies as he refused, at first, to handshake President Rafael Correa and Vice-President-elected Jorge Glas. Then he backtracked and returned to handshake Correa and Glas. But this time, this were Correa and Glas that refused the handshake. Also, Bucaram proved he is an idiot as he forget to sign his accreditation.

There is still speculation over the name of the various candidates in the next Guayaquil municipal election as Jimmy Jairala (center-right and new ally of Correa) seemed to have renounced to run to instead secure his reelection as prefect of Guayas. Incumbent mayor Jaime Nebot keeps up the suspense as he will reveal his decision to run or not in September. He apparently wants to retire but the PSC-Madera de Guerrero alliance pushed him to run for reelection as they don't have any other credible candidate. Nebot is the very popular incumbent and would likely be reelected. Guillermo Lasso's party, Creo, intends to run its own party president, César Monge, as a candidate no matter if Nebot is running for reelection or not. This illustrate the strategy of Lasso to distance himself from the PSC (he previously said that Creo and the PSC will not form a joint parliamentary group) and to label himself as the leader of a moderate and fresh center-right.

If there are people interest in the next Ecuadorian local elections (provincial prefets and mayors in February 2014), I can try to make a thread dedicated on the subject.

Talk Elections

Other Elections - Analysis and Discussion => International Elections => Topic started by: Famous Mortimer on February 01, 2013, 11:12:56 AM