“A resounding victory for Luisa González, if the election is free and fair enough for this to happen, will demonstrate that the Ecuadorian electoral masses have had enough of imperialist superexploitation.”
So ended our last article of early March 2025 covering the first round of the Ecuadorian election, which saw 15 candidates reduced to just two – neoliberal Daniel Noboa and defender of the people, Luisa González.
On Sunday 13 April, the run-off round of voting resulted in Ecuador’s market-friendly president Daniel Noboa seeing off rival Luisa González with 55.8 percent of the vote to González’s 44.4 percent, with 90 percent of votes counted.
Noboa’s win gives him a four-year mandate to continue his pretence of ‘war’ on criminal drug gangs – a pretext for imposing martial law, militarising Ecuador’s streets and constructing new maximum-security prisons, undoubtedly to house vocal opponents of which there are sure to be many. For in the wise words of Mao Zedong: “The masses in a backward country are often deceived by reactionaries, and at certain times and in certain places they may even support reactionaries. But reaction is always shortlived.”
The Ecuadorian onslaught
Following his win and speaking at his estate on the country’s Pacific coast, Noboa said: “Ecuador is changing. That path will mean our children will live better lives than we did.”
Oh, the irony and dishonesty of his statement. Speaking from his vast estate, this son of a billionaire banana magnate can pontificate whilst 27 percent of Ecuadorians and 34 percent of the country’s youth live in poverty. Foreign armies are not the solution to Ecuador’s drug and gang issues: an end to the impoverishment that makes young men susceptible to gang recruitment is. The people of Ecuador should brace themselves for the onslaught about to be unleashed, for when Noboa refers to ‘our children’, he is speaking only of his own class.
Noboa recently told the BBC that he wanted foreign armies from places such as the USA and Europe to join his fight against gangs in the country. This was a euphemistic invitation for western imperial rape, rampage and pillage of the Ecuadorian people’s resources, the mandate dictated by his elite US backers.
Noboa aims to change the constitution to allow foreign military bases back into the country, thus fulfilling a US strategic objective to revive the Munroe doctrine and reinvigorate its imperial dominance over Latin America. In particular, to bring down socialist and sovereign states resisting US control including Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba.
Controversial official results
Following the election outcome, Luisa González refused to recognise the result announced by the national electoral council (CNE), suggesting that electoral fraud had occurred during the count that favoured Noboa and went against the will of the people, thus trampling any pretence of ‘democracy’.
Analysts have also questioned the veracity of the numbers, given that González, who received almost 44 percent of the votes in the first round and was also able to create alliances with political forces from the left and the centre of the Ecuadorian political spectrum in the weeks leading up to the election. Noboa, on the other hand, was entangled in multiple scandals, as was highlighted by González during their election debates and throughout the campaign. Eleven opinion polls – including those commissioned by the government itself – had projected a González victory in advance of the election.
González condemned Noboa’s declaration of a ‘state of emergency’ in seven provinces just the day before the election and has demanded that ballot boxes be reopened and votes recounted, calling the election … “the most massive electoral fraud in Ecuador’s history” and suggesting that “the fight continues”. At the time of writing, there is no further update on whether a recount will be undertaken.
We appreciate that it’s now almost customary for losing candidates to cry ‘corruption’, but we must be wary of rebuffing claims out of hand. It is important we assess each situation independently to determine the veracity of such claims. After all, we are aware that corruption exists, and the more there is to lose, the higher the likelihood of corruption.
Unlike the BBC and other biased western media that fail to provide anything more than scant, superficial coverage, independent journalists from the Grayzone has presented the outcome of an investigative report by journalist Andres Duran, who places Noboa at the centre of a web of systematic corruption that includes state collusion with drug cartels. Their programme on this investigation is available on YouTube and supports Luisa González’s contention that there is widespread corruption in the Ecuadorian political system and that she is fighting forces far more powerful than just her single opponent. (Bombshell investigation exposes Ecuador government cartel conspiracy, 9 April 2025)
Awaken the working class and set ye free
In 1871 Karl Marx pointed out that “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”
In 2025, the people of Ecuador either voted for, or have had imposed upon them through corrupt means, the most oppressive representatives of the bourgeois elite, who now have a four-year mandate to inflict excessive pain and extract excessive gain. The people will be pushed to the brink.
We send our solidarity to the great people of Ecuador and offer them our full support in their fight against oppressive forces. For in the words of our late leader and mentor: “The working class does not advance an inch towards its emancipation through the parliamentary swindle. On the contrary, it finds itself more enslaved, for now the chains are hidden under the illusion of democracy.” (Harpal Brar, Social Democracy: the Enemy Within, 2009)
