QUITO – Daniel Noboa stunned voters in 2023 when he won a snap election for a 16-month presidency after only a brief stint as a lawmaker and with no established political machinery.

No longer a political neophyte, the conservative millionaire defeated the protegee of Ecuador’s most influential recent president for a second time and earned four years in office with Sunday’s election victory.

The new term will allow Noboa, 37 and heir to a fortune built on the banana trade, to continue some of his no-holds-barred crimefighting strategies that part of the electorate finds appealing but which have tested the limits of laws and norms of governing.

“A huge hug to all the Ecuadorians who always believed in this young president,” he told supporters after the National Electoral Council said results showed an “irreversible trend” in his favor. “Ecuador wants to be different… it wants to move forward.”

Only 16 months in office

Noboa opened an event organizing company when he was 18 and then joined his father’s Noboa Corp., where he held management positions in the shipping, logistics and commercial areas. He began his political career in 2021, when he won a seat in the National Assembly and chaired its Economic Development Commission.

Noboa defeated leftist lawyer Luisa González in the October 2023 runoff of a snap election triggered by the decision of then-President Guillermo Lasso to dissolve the National Assembly and shorten his own mandate as a result. Noboa defeated her again in Sunday’s runoff election.

Figures released by Ecuador’s National Electoral Council showed Noboa receiving 55.8% of the vote with more than 92% of ballots counted, while González earned 44%. However, González, the mentee of former President Rafael Correa, vowed to seek a recount over what she described as “grotesque” electoral fraud.

Under Noboa’s watch, the homicide rate dropped from 46.18 per 100,000 people in 2023, to 38.76 per 100,000 people in 2024. But despite the decrease, the rate remained far higher than the 6.85 homicides per 100,000 people seen in 2019.

During his brief first term, Noboa has sought to establish a friendly relationship with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Grace Jaramillo, an Andean region expert and professor at the University of British Columbia, said these efforts played a role in some voters’ decisions.

“The majority of Ecuadorians have migrant relatives and know well that a scenario with González, a leftist, would be terrible for deportations,” Jaramillo said. “t’s an issue that touches every middle- and working-class home… Showing closeness to Trump was crucial for many families.”

Questionable tactics

Noboa’s crime-fighting strategies have been questioned inside and outside the South American country.

Ecuador has been under a state of internal armed conflict since he declared it in January 2024 in order to mobilize the military in certain places, including prisons, where organized crime has taken hold. To the shock and bewilderment of world leaders, Noboa also authorized last year’s police raid on Mexico’s embassy in the capital, Quito, to arrest former Vice President Jorge Glas, a convicted criminal and fugitive who had been living there for months.

Further, he entrusted presidential powers while campaigning earlier this year to a government official, unelected Vice President Verónica Abad, as required by the Ecuadorian Code of Democracy.

Ahead of February’s first-round election, Quito’s University of the Americas professor Maria Cristina Bayas said Noboa “has not hesitated to use the law and the Constitution to keep things working the way he wants” and may continue to do so if reelected.

Noboa and Abad began feuding before taking office. The origins of the dispute are unknown, but shortly after becoming president, Noboa dispatched Abad to serve as ambassador to Israel, effectively isolating her from his administration. She has described her monthslong posting as “forced exile.”

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Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.