Luisa González, the opposition candidate in Ecuador’s presidential runoff Sunday, has alleged “grotesque electoral fraud” following her defeat to incumbent Daniel Noboa, the heir to a banana industry fortune.
González claims the unexpectedly large margin of victory for Noboa—55.65 percent against 44.35 percent or a difference of over 1 million votes— contrasts with pre-election polls suggesting a victory for González. They had a near tie in the first round.
Statistically, there are significant grounds for suspicions of a rigged election. Despite the endorsement from the third most voted candidate Leonidas Iza in the first round, who received 5 percent, González received the same percentage of the vote in the runoff, 44 percent, while Noboa’s vote jumped 11 percentage points.
González, whose Citizen’s Revolution party presents itself as “left-wing,” has raised concerns about potential irregularities but has not yet filed a formal challenge before the electoral court.
González has highlighted that Ecuador’s recent elections were conducted under heavy militarization, effectively resembling martial law and resulting in voter suppression. Ports were militarized, borders closed, and a heavy military presence was maintained in urban areas during the election period.
Since January 2025, Noboa extended a state of emergency in seven provinces and the capital, Quito. This measure suspended fundamental rights, including the inviolability of correspondence and homes, enabling warrantless searches and raids. A nighttime curfew (10:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m.) was imposed in 22 municipalities.
Over 22,000 soldiers were mobilized across the country ostensibly to combat drug cartels and criminal gangs, which Noboa designated as terrorist organizations under international humanitarian law.
The militarized response included arbitrary arrests and violent incidents. For example, four children were killed by a military patrol in Guayaquil, sparking public outrage.
Presidents Gustavo Petro of Colombia and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela have refused to recognize the results. Based on reports from Colombian observers, Petro highlighted in a post on X: “The holding of the elections was always under military surveillance, direct and armed with masked faces. Every polling place had a strong uniformed and armed military presence.”
Amid reports that Noboa has drawn up a “black list” of some 100 opposition figures and ordered border police to prevent their leaving the country, Petro announced that Colombia would offer them asylum.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum described the election results as “dubious” and said that “Mexico will not renew ties with Ecuador while Noboa is in charge.” Ties between the two countries were severed as a result of the invasion in April 2024 of the Mexican embassy in Quito to kidnap ex-vice president Jorge Glas who had sought asylum there.
Reports surfaced of anomalies such as double voting and counterfeit ballots. Several arrests were made in connection with these issues, but their scale was limited.
Observers for the Organization of American States, politically dominated by Washington, and the European Union, dismissed fraud charges despite reporting on major irregularities, including Noboa’s failure to take a “leave of absence” from the presidency to run in the elections, as required by the constitution, and his direct pressure on the activities of the electoral bodies.
Whatever the validity of the claims of direct fraud, Noboa ran as a dictator candidate, and the election was conducted in an atmosphere of intimidation, with martial law imposed in much of the country, apparently including the states where González had the most support. The OAS report notes that troops were seen taking pictures of the ballots as a threat to voters.
The fact that some prominent members of González’s own party have acknowledged Noboa’s victory and urged acceptance of the results reflects accommodation to the shift to the right and fear of triggering a mass mobilization from below that they would prove unable to control.
Similarly, the leadership of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE), having endorsed González for the second round, welcomed Noboa’s re-election.
The re-election of Noboa was achieved on the shoulders of the military and police apparatus in Ecuador and of US imperialism, consolidating the direct rule of the Ecuadorian oligarchy under a police state dictatorship.
Shortly before the elections, he promised a $72 million increase in the budget for the police and military to secure their support.
Noboa has invited foreign troops to assist Ecuador’s military, including a potential US deployment. He also has pursued alliances with private military contractors like billionaire Erik Prince, founder of the infamous Blackwater, raising concerns about sovereignty and human rights violations.
Prince traveled to Ecuador shortly before the runoff election and participated in military operations in Guayaquil, one of the country’s most violent cities. In a video released by Ecuador’s Defense Ministry, Prince explicitly urged Ecuadorians to support Noboa, warning that failure to elect him could lead to Ecuador becoming a “narco-state” and another Venezuela.
Noboa also leveraged his relationship with Trump, who granted him a high-profile meeting in his Mar-a-Lago resort two weeks before the vote. The meeting highlighted collaboration between Ecuador and the US, including discussions about establishing a new naval base in Ecuador for US military personnel.
Noboa had already given a green light for the Pentagon to establish a strategically located military base in the Galapagos Islands, further endangering its unique and sensitive biodiversity.
González failed to counter the endorsements by the Ecuadorian military and American billionaires Prince and Trump with any progressive alternative. Instead, she held meetings with the IMF to make assurances of continued social austerity, made appeals to the mining and oil industries—the largest in the country—and, echoing Noboa, focused her campaign on a buildup of the repressive state apparatus and a hardline on crime.
Ecuador’s exiled former president Rafael Correa, the leader of the Citizens Revolution Party of González, had been able, under the conditions of a commodities boom and increased profits for the corporations, to offer a limited expansion of social spending from 2006 to about 2014. After the collapse of the boom, however, he was also in charge of imposing initial social cuts and deploying the military to attack protesters, including indigenous groups opposing natural resource extraction in protected areas.
Since then, the entire ruling class has adopted a program of social counterrevolution and a growing alignment with US imperialism.
In Ecuador, all factions of the ruling elite have sought to maintain a balancing act between China and the United States, which buy similar amounts of Ecuadorian exports. The Trump administration’s offensive to secure military and economic domination in the region against Chinese influence poses an enormous crisis for Ecuador, as well as for other Latin American countries whose ruling elites are responding similarly.
Having already used deadly violence to repress mass protests against social inequality in 2019 and 2022, the only response available to the Ecuadorian ruling elite, represented by both fascistic figures like Noboa and “leftist” Correismo, is to turn to dictatorial forms of rule to impose the costs of the deepening crisis of global capitalism on the working class.