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Noboa: Bible-thumping anti-communist banana magnate, presidential hopeful
By Patrick Moser
AFP
QUITO
Petroleumworld.com 11 24 06
A bible-thumping, anti-communist banana magnate and Ecuador's wealthiest man, Alvaro Noboa, 56, says God picked him to run in the South American country's presidential election.
The pro-market billionaire, who is running neck-and-neck against a leftist economist in Sunday's run-off vote, insists he is the best qualified to govern Ecuador.
"Because I am one of the poor and I am the candidate of the poor. Because God has told me to be president," he said.
A populist who owns 110 companies, Noboa has vowed to use his wealth and influence to attract investment to the oil-rich but chronically unstable country.
He also wants Ecuador to distance itself from communist Cuba and Venezuela, whose virulently anti-US president, Hugo Chavez, favors his leftist rival Rafael Correa.
Chavez has called Noboa an "extreme right-wing fundamentalist" who amassed his wealth on the back of child labor and exploited workers.
Noboa has denied longstanding allegations that child labor was used on plantations that supply bananas to his exporting corporation, which has been involved in a series of clashes with its workers.
Noboa, who was defeated in two previous presidential bids, led the October 15 first round election with 26.8 percent of the vote and a four-point advantage over Correa. Pollsters say the two are now virtually tied.
In campaigning marked by mudslinging, Correa called Noboa a "paramilitary commander" set on making Ecuador a US colony. Noboa in turn dismissed his rival as a "communist devil."
"The extreme leftist and communist position of Rafael Correa could lead us to live as they do in Cuba, with 12 dollars a month, without private property, without liberty, without a Congress," Noboa said recently.
At campaign rallies, he invokes the name of God, urges his supporters to pray for the sick and hands out money and wheelchairs to the needy.
The revivalist tone of his campaign has drawn criticism from Ecuador's Roman Catholic Church, which objected to Noboa's use of Bibles, crucifixes and other religious paraphernalia.
The billionaire has vowed "to turn six million unemployed Ecuadorans into middle-class citizens" and promised to build 300,000 homes a year for the poor, insisting that building an average of almost 1,000 houses a day is perfectly realistic.
Noboa has picked his lawyer as his running mate, and his wife won a congressional seat on October 15.
Born in Guayaquil on November 21, 1950, Noboa studied law in Ecuador. He inherited his family's banana business following protracted litigation with his siblings in the 1990s.
In 1996 Noboa was named to head Ecuador's Monetary Board by then-president Abdala Bucaram, who was eventually thrown out of office for "mental disability."
Noboa was defeated in the 1998 presidential election, founded the Institutional Renewal Party of National Action (PRIAN) in 2002 and lost his second presidential bid that same year.
He runs the Crusade for a New Humanity foundation, which he says draws on his personal and company fortune to fund social projects.
AFP 23 1105 GMT 11 06
Copyright© 2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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