González and Noboa Prepare The Second Round in Ecuador With Speeches About The Past And Future

According to the preliminary results with about 93% of the tally sheets, González, from the Revolución Ciudadana movement, led by former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017), has 33.31% of the votes.

Noboa follows her with 23.66% and in third place is Villavicencio (16.50%), who was murdered on August 9 by alleged Colombian hitmen when he was leaving a political rally in Quito and whose candidacy was assumed by his journalist colleague, Christian Zurita.

Read also: Fernando Villavicencio: These Are the Denunciation He Made Before Being Assassinated in Ecuador

For González, the assassination of Villavicencio, a staunch enemy of Correa due to the allegations of alleged corruption that he made against him throughout his journalistic career, harmed his candidacy and prevented him from achieving a victory in the first round.

Past and future

Noboa's winning proposal "was to be a new and young figure in politics, to sell himself as the future," while Correism repeated its hard vote and, as in the local elections in February, obtained around a third of the votes, said analyst Alberto Acosta Burneo.

"Noboa is going to have to appeal to that voter who is neither strongly anti-correist nor strongly correist, and has to reinvent himself to be able to accept what that voter wants," including those who supported candidate Jan Topic, who gave priority to the issue of safety.

Ecuador is experiencing a wave of insecurity, which the authorities attribute to organized crime and drug trafficking and which has caused the country to go from 5.8 to 25.32 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 5 years in 2022, the highest figure in its history.

"Noboa has included issues that go far beyond security, and the electorate also liked that, but there is an electorate that did have a fixation on the issue of security," he recalled.

Challenges for the ballot

The analyst told EFE that the challenge for Correism is to identify a way to "overcome this discourse of going back to the past, or of personal revenge, of which former President Correa has repeatedly spoken."

"This speech about going back to the past is not a speech that calls on the entire population, especially the youngest, who want to go to the future," said the analyst about the evocation made by Luisa González during her campaign for stability and security that existed in Ecuador during the presidential decade of Correa.

After knowing the first preliminary results, which placed him in the second round with González, Noboa, 35 years old and son of the tycoon and five-time presidential candidate Álvaro Noboa, asserted that "it will not be the first time that a new project turns the political 'establishment'".

"That freshness in doing politics is what has brought us here," said the candidate who has run a low-profile campaign compared to that of his seven contenders and, above all, without political attacks or sheltered by old political tents.

Speaking serene, slow and concrete, Noboa also attributed his triumph to his work in the territory and his performance in the mandatory presidential debate on August 13, after which his name circulated strongly among the population.

Possible alliances

After going to the ballot on October 15, Noboa has affirmed that the only alliance he has is "with the people", with which he was confident of winning the Presidency.

"Let's continue now, more together than ever. We deserve a new Ecuador," said Noboa, the youngest candidate in the race.

"Right now we have a plan, a project, and if there are people who want to join, they are welcome," he commented, anticipating that he will talk with Jan Topic, a security specialist, to see what he can contribute to his candidacy in the second round.

On his side, González has commented that Ecuador "requires peace, work, security", for which he formulated an appeal "to the unity of all Ecuadorians: private, public sector, all the forces of the country to build that vision of homeland that give us dignified conditions for all and not just a small group".