Car horns in Quito blared in celebration on Sunday as banana empire heir Daniel Noboa, 35, became Ecuador’s youngest-ever president-elect, vowing to “restore peace” to a country ravaged by a bloody drug gang war.
After the electoral authority declared him the victor and socialist rival Luisa Gonzalez conceded defeat, Noboa vowed that “tomorrow we begin work to rebuild a country that has been severely hit by violence, corruption and hatred.”
Long a peaceful haven between major cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has seen violence explode in recent years as enemy gangs with links to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control. The fighting has seen at least 460 inmates massacred in prisons since February 2021 — many beheaded or burned alive in mass riots.
Photo: AFP
The bloodbath has spilled into the streets, with gangs dangling headless corpses from city bridges and detonating car bombs outside police stations in a show of force.
In August, the violence claimed the life of anti-graft and anti-cartel presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, mowed down in a barrage of submachine-gun fire after a campaign speech. He had been polling in second place.
A state of emergency was declared after former journalist Villavicencio’s assassination, and Noboa and Gonzalez both campaigned, and voted, in bullet-proof vests and with heavy security details.
On Sunday, Noboa told supporters in his home town of Olon in the southwest his goal was “to restore peace ... to bring back education to the youth” and create jobs.
Ecuadorans voted for 10 hours on Sunday with no reports of violence, watched over by about 100,000 police officers and soldiers.
“May we elect the best president because [he or she] will govern a country that is destroyed ... to address all these problems such as insecurity,” indigenous voter Ramiro Duchitanga told reporters in Cuenca.
The main concerns of Ecuadorans, according to opinion polls, are crime and violence in a country where the murder rate quadrupled in the four years to last year. Noboa, who obtained about 52 percent of the vote according to a near-complete count, was elected to only 16 months in office to complete the term of incumbent Guillermo Lasso, who called a snap vote to avoid possible impeachment for alleged embezzlement.
Under the law, Noboa can run again for the 2025 to 2029 presidential term, and the one after that.
Both runoff candidates were relative unknowns in politics.
Noboa is the son of one of Ecuador’s richest men, who himself has five failed presidential bids to his name.
The president-elect, whose only political experience is two years as a lawmaker, calls himself “center-left,” but embraces neoliberal economic thinking.
Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has died of pneumonia at the age of 48 while on a trip to Japan, where she contracted influenza during the Lunar New Year holiday, her sister confirmed today through an agent. "Our whole family came to Japan for a trip, and my dearest and most kindhearted sister Barbie Hsu died of influenza-induced pneumonia and unfortunately left us," Hsu's sister and talk show hostess Dee Hsu (徐熙娣) said. "I was grateful to be her sister in this life and that we got to care for and spend time with each other. I will always be grateful to
REMINDER: Of the 6.78 million doses of flu vaccine Taiwan purchased for this flu season, about 200,000 are still available, an official said, following Big S’ death As news broke of the death of Taiwanese actress and singer Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛), also known as Big S (大S), from severe flu complications, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and doctors yesterday urged people at high risk to get vaccinated and be alert to signs of severe illness. Hsu’s family yesterday confirmed that the actress died on a family holiday in Japan due to pneumonia during the Lunar New Year holiday. CDC Deputy Director-General Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) told an impromptu news conference that hospital visits for flu-like illnesses from Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 reached 162,352 — the highest
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
Suspected Chinese spies posing as Taiwanese tourists have been arrested for allegedly taking photographs of Philippine Coast Guard ships, local media reported. The suspected spies stayed at a resort in Palawan, where from a secluded location they used their phones to record coast guard ships entering and leaving a base, Philippine TV network GMA said on Wednesday. Palawan is near the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and other disputed areas of the South China Sea, where tensions have been on the rise between China and the Philippines. The suspects allegedly also used drones without permission and installed cameras on coconut trees in the
RSS