Ecuador picking leader from ambitious hopefuls

QUITO, Ecuador – No matter who wins Ecuador’s presidential election today, many outside the country will view it as a decision between the region’s dueling political stereotypes: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s dream of a unified region liberated from U.S. influence, or that of free-market backers embracing a globalized economy.

For most who will actually make the choice, it’s nothing of the sort.

Public opinion polls show leftist economist Rafael Correa and banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa locked in a near dead heat, and in recent weeks broad ideological rhetoric has given way to specific promises of concrete and cash. Each candidate has tried to one-up the other with vows of massive government housing projects, new jobs and low-interest loans. In a country where no president has served a full term in more than a decade, voters want to see some tangible results from their next leader, and it matters little what overarching political philosophy stands behind his pledges.

The campaign since last month’s first-round election has been bitterly divisive with repeated allegations of electoral fraud, increasing the possibility that either candidate would face a rough honeymoon.

“It doesn’t matter which of the two candidates wins, Ecuador will have a weak president, at the mercy of the Congress and facing difficulties of governability,” said Adrian Bonilla, director of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Quito.

In last month’s election, Noboa got 26.8 percent of the vote to edge out Correa by 4 percentage points. The latest polls give Correa a slight edge, though few political observers put much faith in them – the same polls had predicted Correa would finish ahead of Noboa in the first round.

Correa, 43, a charismatic economist who received his doctorate at the University of Illinois, spent the early stages of his campaign promising to kill a proposed free-trade agreement with the United States, close a U.S. military base used for anti-narcotics operations, and default on the nation’s foreign debt so that social spending could be increased.

But after the first round, Correa focused on specific domestic spending programs, such as housing grants and microcredits for the poor.

Correa paints Noboa – Ecuador’s richest man – as the face of an oligarchy he says has corrupted the highest reaches of government. Noboa owns more than 110 businesses, including one of the world’s largest banana exporting companies, which he inherited from his father. Correa has repeatedly told his followers to suspect fraud if Noboa wins Sunday.

Noboa, 56, is an old-fashioned populist who dropped to his knees during stump speeches, holding a Bible in his hands and saying he was sent by God to help rid the world of communism. He favors free trade and says he will work to encourage foreign investment, but the cornerstones of his campaign are his promises of more jobs and government housing.