Quito, Ecuador – One is a banana billionaire who hobnobs with the Kennedys and Rockefellers. The other calls himself a friend of Venezuela’s anti-U.S. president, Hugo Chavez. On Sunday they square off for the presidency of Ecuador, a country whose last three elected leaders were driven from office by street protests.
Voters in this runoff election must choose between two populists from the right and left: Alvaro Noboa, whose promises include building homes at a pace of 34 an hour to solve the housing shortage, and Rafael Correa, a leftist economist who has rattled Wall Street by threatening to reduce payments on the country’s $16.1 billion foreign debt.
A victory for Correa would tip Ecuador into the ranks of Latin American countries that have turned left in recent years. But with polls predicting a dead heat, and Correa claiming fraud even before the votes are cast, the nation of 13.4 million, three-fourths of them poor, could be in for a lengthy postelection stalemate.
While Noboa is running for the third time, Correa – tall, charismatic and youthful at 43 – has surged into Ecuadorean politics as a fresh-faced outsider pledging radical reforms to clean up a political establishment widely seen as corrupt and unresponsive to the country’s needs.
Noboa, 56, Ecuador’s wealthiest man, has crisscrossed this small Andean country handing out computers, wheelchairs and cash. He has pledged to build 300,000 low-cost homes a year, financing them through government bonds, and to create jobs by persuading his rich foreign friends to invest in Ecuador.
The campaign has cast a spotlight on how, once again, Chavez is an election factor beyond his borders.
As in neighboring Peru last spring, a leftist candidate started out identifying with Chavez, only to backpedal when he found the comparison was costing him support. In the first round, Correa not only endorsed Chavez’s depiction of President Bush as the devil, but took the comparison further, saying Bush was too “dimwitted” to be Satan.
But this month he said his remarks had been “imprudent,” and he also criticized Chavez for attacking Noboa as a U.S. lackey.
He told The Associated Press that he was not disavowing his friendship with Chavez, but would not allow the Venezuelan leader to influence his government.
At a news conference Thursday with foreign correspondents, Correa, who has a doctorate from the University of Illinois, said he hoped to have good relations with the United States “within a framework of mutual respect.” But he repeated his pledge not to extend the U.S. military’s use of the Manta air base on the Pacific coast for drug surveillance flights when a treaty runs out in 2009.
At his closing campaign rally of thousands of cheering supporters in northern Quito Thursday night, Correa again accused his opponent of using child labor on his banana plantations and evading taxes on the 114 companies he operates.
“Don’t believe the penguin. He’s used to lying,” Correa said, mocking Noboa’s short, rotund physique and high-pitched voice.
“At stake here is whether to have a nation or be just one more plantation for the conceited Noboa. Dignity has no price. Ecuador will defeat corrupt checkbooks,” he said.
Maria Torres, a 59-year-old economist attending the rally, said her vote was for Correa.
“One is an intellectual and the other is a complete animal who embarrasses us,” she said. “Correa is the best candidate Ecuador has had since democracy returned in 1979 and we all trust him.” At his closing rally in the coastal city of Guayaquil, his political stronghold, Noboa repeatedly invoked God, held up a Bible and accused Correa of waging a “dirty and diabolical war” against him.
“He runs with communists but he isn’t man enough to call himself a communist,” Noboa said.
Armando Palma, 57, an employee of a travel agency, said he was supporting Noboa “because he seems to me a man of experience. We can’t let ourselves fall into the hands of an inexperienced person.
This young man is also letting himself be influenced by Chavez in Venezuela.” The race has seesawed. Correa was the favorite in the first round on Oct. 15 until Noboa surged at the last minute to win 27 percent to Correa’s 23 percent in the field of 13 candidates.
Noboa built up an advantage of nearly 20 points over Correa in the following weeks but Correa whittled it down as he softened his radical rhetoric and began to make populist promises of his own.
Correa pledged to construct 100,000 low-cost homes and copied Noboa’s promise to double to $36 a “poverty bonus” that 1.2 million poor Ecuadoreans receive each month.
On top of his debt threat, he vows to reform the political system to reduce the power of traditional parties in Congress. But that worries some voters in a country that has suffered a decade of political instability.
Ecuador has had seven presidents since 1996, including three elected leaders who were driven from power in street protests and a vice president who served in the office only two days before Congress replaced her with its own president.
