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With Noboa leading, Ecuador presidential vote heads for runoff
AFP Mauricio Duenas (left)/ Rodrigo Buendia
Ecuadorean presidential candidates, billionaire Alvaro Noboa (left) and leftist economist Rafael CorreaBy Hector Velasco
AFP
QUITO
Petroleumworld.com 10 16 06
Ecuador headed Monday for a runoff presidential vote after two main rivals -- billionaire Alvaro Noboa and leftist economist Rafael Correa -- appeared to have failed to gain enough votes for an outright victory.
Local election law requires a candidate to secure at least 40 percent of the ballot and have at least a 10-point lead over the runner-up to win the contest in the first round.
But with more than 61 percent of the vote counted, Noboa, a 56-year-old banana magnate, led Correa, a 43-year-old ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, by 26.8 percent versus 22.4 percent of the ballot, according to partial official returns.
Moderate socialist Leon Roldos ran a distant third, with almost 16 percent of the vote.
If the current trend holds, the fate of the Ecuadoran presidency will be decided in a Noboa-Correa face-off on November 26.
Correa, who had been leading in opinion polls prior to Sunday's vote, immediately accused his rival and authorities of fraud.
"There have been irregularities," he contended. "We have not been able to inspect the software used for vote counting."
Noboa attributed his lead to his opponent's friendship with Cuba and Chavez, who is a staunch ally of Havana.
"The people have just given the biggest lashing you can give to a friend of terrorism, a friend of Chavez, a friend of Cuba," Noboa said.
Rafael Bielsa, head of an Organization of American States observation team, said earlier voting went normally throughout Ecuador and saw "no irregularity" in the polling.
Bielsa, a former foreign minister from Argentina, was slammed as biased by Correa, but Saturday he said charges of fraud were unproven.
After voting in Quito, Correa warned that he would not tolerate irregularities.
"We will not let them steal the elections," he said.
President Alfredo Palacio said Sunday that the election results "will be respected".
Noboa, an openly pro-US candidate, campaigned as a Bible-thumping populist and a rabid anti-communist.
During campaign rallies, Noboa sounded more like a revivalist preacher than a presidential candidate, asking voters to pray to Christ Jesus for the handicapped and handing out checks and wheelchairs.
At one rally Noboa said "God has told me to be president."
Noboa, who has blasted Correa as a "communist devil," has promised 300,000 new homes to the poor and vowed "to turn six million unemployed Ecuadorans into middle-class citizens."
Correa promised to seek Ecuador's membership in Mercosur, the South American free-trade area, and would not sign any trade deals with Washington.
A former economy minister, Correa describes himself as a "Christian, humanist and leftist."
"We have to overcome the fallacies of economic neoliberalism and search for what in Latin America has been called 21st century socialism," he told foreign media here.
Ecuadorans also voted for members of Congress as well as provincial and municipal officials.
The South American country has had seven presidents in the past 10 years, three of them leaving amid tumultuous uprisings.
Since 1979, only three democratically elected heads of state managed to serve out their full terms.
AFP 16 0526 GMT 10 06Copyright© 2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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