Newley Purnell

The AP’s Monte Hayes reports that Ecuador has elected a new president:

Ecuador’s president-elect Rafael Correa was once a Boy Scout, later a social worker in an impoverished highland Indian village and now describes himself as a Christian leftist.

Childhood friends still recall Correa’s natural leadership abilities and strong character on the soccer field.

But during his run for the presidency, the tall and charismatic nationalist picked up a reputation for also being confrontational and uncompromising, traits that could add to Ecuador’s political instability when he takes office in January.

Correa, a friend of Venezuela’s firebrand President Hugo Chavez, defeated banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, 56, in Sunday’s presidential runoff.

(Emphasis mine.)

The Miami Herald’s Steven Dudley and Carol Rosenberg report that Correa vows not to renew the US military’s lease on an airbase in the northern coastal city of Manta:

The leader in Ecuador’s presidential election Monday repeated his promise to end the U.S. military’s counternarcotics operations out of an airport in Manta, while his rival cried fraud.
…
The U.S. military considers Manta ”an effective tool” in the drug war. It estimates that from 2000 to 2005, the military flew 2,000 missions from Manta and claims those flights contributed ”directly or indirectly” to the seizure of 52 metric tons of illegal drugs with a street value of more than $2 billion.

Correa, however, has alleged that the United States has used the base to attack Colombian rebels, in violation of the agreement. During the campaign, he claimed the U.S. government was trying to drag Ecuador into neighboring Colombia’s war against leftist guerrillas. Correa has said his country will remain ”neutral” in that four-decades-old war.

More on that from Nikolas Kozloff in Counter Punch:

It now looks as if Rafael Correa, a leftist candidate in Ecuador, has handily won his country’s presidential election. As of Monday morning, with about 21 percent of the ballot counted, Correa had 65 percent compared to 35 percent for Alvaro Noboa, according to Ecuador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal. If Correa wins, he will preside over Ecuador for a four year term.

It’s yet another feather in the cap for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who had long cultivated the aspiring leader’s support. What’s more, it’s a stinging blow against the Bush administration which now must confront a much more unenviable political milieu in the region. Ecuador now joins other left leaning regimes such as Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Chile, all of which are sympathetic to Chavez.

Bush cannot dismiss the Correa victory as inconsequential: Ecuador is currently the second largest South American exporter of crude to the U.S. The small Andean country hosts the only U.S. military base in South America, where 400 troops are currently stationed. Correa opposes an extension of the U.S. lease at the air base in Manta, which serves as a staging ground for drug surveillance flights. The U.S. lease expires in 2009.

“If they want,” Correa has said ironically, “we won’t close the base in 2009, but the United States would have to allow us to have an Ecuadoran base in Miami in return.”

(Emphasis mine.)

Business Week’s Geri Smith, however, says Correa’s future is insecure, and that Washington is “taking a wait-and-see approach”:

A leftist economist who has vowed to break off free-trade talks with the U.S. and advocated defaulting on the country’s foreign debt has been elected president of Ecuador. But there is no telling whether 43-year-old Rafael Correa will remain in office long enough to carry out the platform that swept him to victory: Ecuador has had seven presidents in the last 10 years, several of them removed by its congress or forced out by violent street protests after just days or months in office.

Correa, running as an independent in a country where traditional political parties are widely discredited, won 57% of the vote to defeat billionaire banana magnate Alvaro Noboa, a populist. But Correa has no political base in Ecuador’s congress, and that means he has a tough road ahead: He campaigned on a promise to dissolve the congress and convene a special assembly to completely rewrite Ecuador’s constitution, but the congress is likely to block that initiative. “This is a president who will face possible impeachment at every turn,” says Patrick Esteruelas, a Latin America analyst for the Eurasia Group, a New York risk consultancy.

Describing himself as a “close friend” of Venezuela’s firebrand President Hugo Chávez, Correa is the latest leftist candidate to win at the polls in Latin America, where voters seem increasingly frustrated with the inability of governments to reduce the poverty that afflicts nearly half of the continent’s people, in spite of high world prices for oil and other commodities produced in the region. In early November, Nicaraguans elected former Sandinista revolutionary Daniel Ortega, also friendly with Chávez, and with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, as president. By electing Correa, a political outsider, Ecuadorans made it clear that they are frustrated with corruption and incompetence among their country’s political class.

(Emphasis mine.)

Elsewhere, the CSM’s Sara Miller Llana reports:

The apparent victory of Rafael Correa - a left-leaning economist and friend of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez - in Ecuador’s presidential runoff election Sunday is the latest triumph for leftist governments in Latin America.

“Hopefully, we will get much, much closer to Mr. Chávez,” Mr. Correa said after declaring victory Sunday night.

At press time, three exit polls, a quick count, and official results from more than half of the ballots showed Correa with close to 60 percent of the vote.

The election, which pitted Correa against billionaire banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, was watched closely in the US. Correa had promised to disregard a free trade agreement with the US and close down a US military base in the country. Correa’s win means Ecuador joins Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, and Venezuela on the list of countries that have also elected leftist presidents in recent years.

But Eduardo Gamarra, a Latin American expert at Florida International University, says that while Correa will forge closer relations with Latin America’s leftist leaders, he is unlikely to become as radical or isolationist as his opponents have painted him. “[Ecuador’s] relationship with Chávez will be stronger, the relationship with Evo Morales [Bolivia’s leftist leader] will be stronger,” Mr. Gamarra says. “But these countries have gone too far on the side of democracy and the economic side to turn back. Ecuador cannot think of closing its doors.”

(Emphasis mine.)

And finally, my friend Ed P., on the ground in Paute, Ecuador, a small town outside Cuenca, sends along these images of graffiti there.

An anti-Noboa campaign poster. The headline on this sign says, “Who is Alvaro Noboa? He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“Bush, terrorist. No war of empire.”