Ecuador to elect new president in left-right battle

Ecuadorans will elect their next president on Sunday with voters choosing between a young, socialist protege of ex-leader Rafael Correa and a veteran conservative as the oil-rich country contends with an economic crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Opinion polls have the two contenders neck and neck in a classic left versus right battle for control of the country.

Economist Andres Arauz, 36, is virtually unknown but topped February's first round of voting on the back of support from his mentor, Correa, who led the country for 10 years.

Ex-banker Guillermo Lasso, 65, is a seasoned politician and third-time presidential aspirant after having twice finished second: to Correa in 2013 and Lenin Moreno in 2017.

Polls open at 7:00 am (1200 GMT) with voting obligatory for 13.1 million people in the tiny oil-producing South American country.

Whoever wins will take over from beleaguered Moreno on May 24 and will immediately face an economic crisis exasperated by a 7.8 per cent contraction in GDP in 2020.

Overall debt is almost $64 billion — 63 per cent of GDP — of which $45 billion (45 per cent of GDP) is external debt.

At the same time, the country has been hard hit by the pandemic with hospitals overwhelmed by more than 340,000 coronavirus infections and over 17,000 deaths.

'Technical draw'

Arauz, the candidate from the Union of Hope coalition, topped the first round with almost 33 per cent of the vote, some 13 percentage points ahead of Lasso, from the Creating Opportunities movement.

Although barely known before he ran for the top office, Arauz is the protege of Correa, who would have been his running mate but for an eight-year conviction for corruption.

Correa lives in exile in Belgium, where his wife was born, and he is able to avoid his prison sentence. But his influence on Ecuadoran politics remains strong.

This election is not so much left versus right, but rather "Correism versus anti-Correism," political scientist Esteban Nicholls of Simon Bolivar University told AFP.

The two candidates can barely be separated in polls.

The last poll by Market predicted a "technical draw" on Sunday with Arauz garnering 50 per cent and Lasso getting 49 per cent.

The election is "totally uncertain," Market director Blasco Penaherrera told AFP.

However, Penaherrera said that former banker Lasso's "growth" is "vastly superior" to that of economist Arauz.

Uncertain indigenous vote

Lasso scraped into the runoff by less than half a percentage point ahead of indigenous candidate Yaku Perez, who contested the result and claimed to have been the victim of fraud.

It took weeks for Lasso's second place to be confirmed. Ahead of the runoff, electoral officials have decided to abandon the usual rapid count to avoid potentially misleading results.

Socialist Perez, whose Pachakutik indigenous movement is the second-largest bloc in parliament, picked up around 20 per cent of the vote in the first round.

Pachakutik has refused to back either candidate in the second round, leaving uncertainty over which way its supporters will turn.

The number of undecided voters following the chaotic first round was about 35 per cent but that's since shrunk to eight per cent.

But this "really changed in just a few weeks," said Penaherrera.

'Change needed'

Political scientist Santiago Basabe, of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, believes Arauz has the edge.

"While either could win, it seems to me that Arauz has more chance," said Basabe.

However, "there's a feeling that to a certain extent, it doesn't matter who wins, we just need an immediate change," said Pablo Romero, an analyst at Salesiana University.

Should Lasso win he would face a tough job with Arauz's leftist coalition the largest bloc in Congress.

"There will be permanent tension with the executive. There's almost no chance of the reforms the country needs."