Daniel Noboa Will Have a Brief Mandate in Ecuador Focused On “Security And Employment”

The elected president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, began this Monday to plan the transition for a short term where he has already anticipated that he will focus on security and employment , the two main concerns of Ecuadorians, with measures that he plans to carry out through a popular consultation in his first months in power.

The businessman's first day as president-elect, the youngest in the history of Ecuador, was spent with private meetings at his beach house, the same one where on Sunday he received with family, friends and some journalists the results that proclaimed him the winner of the elections. presidential elections, by winning the second round over Correísta Luisa González.

This Tuesday the transition will begin with a meeting with the current president, the conservative Guillermo Lasso, who has invited him to the presidential palace of Carondelet, in Quito.

Time is running out to prepare a transfer of powers that would foreseeably take place in December, which will give Noboa a short mandate of about 15 months until completing the 2021-2025 period that Lasso had to complete if he had not chosen to apply the "crossed death" last May.

With this constitutional mechanism, the president shortened his mandate and forced this extraordinary electoral process, in exchange for dissolving the National Assembly (Parliament) when, under the control of the opposition led by Correismo, he was preparing to vote for his dismissal as the final step of a impeachment trial in which he was accused of alleged embezzlement.

Referendum

Once in power, he contemplates the possibility of calling a popular consultation in the first hundred days of his mandate to undertake urgent measures in security, employment and tax policy, as his elected vice president, Verónica Abad, anticipated in an interview with EFE.

"The first step is the popular consultation, which will lead us, without a doubt, to be able to fulfill what we have put on the table for Ecuadorians at this moment: employment and security," Abad said.

In this plebiscite they will also seek to "recover institutionality", toughen penalties, segment prisons, introduce faceless judges, independent juries, for which reforms are required in the criminal code.

This consultation could take place, then, at the beginning of 2024, practically a year after another popular consultation that Lasso promoted at the beginning of this year to approve measures in security, institutionality and the environment that could not be carried out when receiving a majority "No" in the eight questions.

Read also:Fiscal Gap And Insecurity: The Challenges That The Next President Of Ecuador Will Have To Face

The members who will form Noboa's cabinet of ministers are still unknown, although it is expected to be mainly composed of members of Ecuadorian business circles, especially from Guayaquil, where both the elected president and his family operate.

Noboa is the third generation of a family of millionaire businessmen and heir to the banana emporium of his father, the magnate Álvaro Noboa, who was a presidential candidate on five occasions without managing to reach the Carondelet seat in any of them, while his son did so. He got it on his first try.

It has also generated expectations in Ecuador about the role that his wife, the nutritionist, model and "influencer" Lavinia Valbonesi, who is pregnant with the couple's second child, will assume as first lady.

Stop homicides, deficit and instability

Noboa will take the reins of Ecuador in its worst insecurity crisis, in the midst of a wave of violence attributed to organized crime that could place the country among the three most violent in Latin America, with a homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants that could be around 40 at the end of 2023.

The winner of the elections will seek to cut this trend and also put into practice his program focused on youth, employment and the creation of opportunities, which was his banner from the beginning of the presidential race, when he did not start as a favorite and many Ecuadorians barely They knew him.

This includes approaches such as tax benefits for companies that hire people, an initiative that will also have to be configured within a strategy to increase tax revenues and balance public accounts, in a year where the deficit may grow again.

And the benefits of oil, one of the great pillars of the Ecuadorian economy, are going to be diminished with the obligation to cease the exploitation of Block 43-ITT, one of the main deposits in Ecuador, after a plebiscite held in August that determined its closure, with which Noboa precisely agreed.

They will also have to worry about generating alliances in the National Assembly (Parliament), since Correismo will once again be the first force in the hemicycle and the National Democratic Action (ADN) formation, of Noboa, has a minority representation, although it can find consensus with other groups such as the conservative Social Christian Party (PSC). The lack of partners in the Legislature was precisely Lasso's Achilles heel.