Clear Policy Guidance: Ecuador Courts Reject Challenge as Noboa Pushes Hardline Agenda 

Ecuadoran courts recently rejected left-wing presidential candidate Luisa González’s challenge to the results of the country’s election in April, dismissing her fraud claims even as most international observers had already recognized incumbent conservative President Daniel Noboa’s victory, reported Reuters. 

Time will tell if Ecuadorans question Noboa’s legitimacy. Until then, the 37-year-old banana empire heir’s win means the South American country will likely pursue two sets of policies in the next four years. 

First, Noboa will almost certainly continue his controversial fight against drug cartels and criminal networks that have proliferated in Ecuador in recent years. To battle the gangs who use the country as a distribution hub for cocaine from Colombia and Peru, he sent the military onto the streets and declared a state of emergency to ensure public safety, explained the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

Critics like González, however, say that Noboa has simultaneously flouted civil rights, ignored court rulings, and compromised citizens’ rights in his harsh crackdown on drug trafficking. They have a point. Ecuadoran military forces have acted brutally – some were recently exposed for killing children, as El País showed.  

Even as he pledged to follow in the footsteps of El Salvador, where President Nayib Bukele has made the streets safe again while imprisoning thousands without due process, voters still trusted Noboa as a strong leader who will confront the violence and murder rates that have skyrocketed in the past few years, the Washington Post wrote. 

The second policy set is more ideological. González was the standard bearer of the progressive left-wing “Correísmo” movement associated with former President Rafael Correa. Although Correa faces corruption charges and now lives in exile in Belgium, he is still a potent powerbroker in Ecuador. 

Correa is especially proficient at using social media to wield influence, Caroline Ávila Nieto, a professor at the University of Azuay in Cuenca, Ecuador, wrote in the New York Times. He has more than one million followers on TikTok and four million on X, “often using humor and sharp language to connect with younger audiences.” 

It wasn’t enough, however. On the campaign trail, Noboa painted Correa and his allies as spendthrift politicians who wasted oil revenues and Chinese loans while failing to nip the incipient drug problem in the bud when they had the chance. 

Noboa repeatedly warned, for example, that Correísmo would turn Ecuador into Venezuela, the neighbor whose dictatorial, socialistic government has failed to sufficiently feed its population or provide young folk with economic opportunities. 

The president still has time to prove who is right, wrote Global Voices, adding, “Noboa made Ecuadorians believe his efforts to restore order were sincere.”