Ecuador Picks Conservative for President; Peru Sets Runoff

QUITO, ECUADOR - Ecuador will be led for the next four years by a conservative businessman after voters on Sunday rebuffed a left-leaning movement that has yielded an economic boom and then a recession since it took hold of the presidency last decade. That election certainty, however, did not extend to neighboring Peru, where the presidential contest is headed to a runoff after none of the 18 candidates obtained more than 50% of the votes.

The South American nations held elections under strict public health measures amid a surging coronavirus pandemic that has brought on new lockdowns and exacerbated a general sense of fatigue. Peru, which also elected a new Congress, reported its highest single-day COVID-19 death count just as voters headed to the polls. The victory of former banker Guillermo Lasso in Ecuador came after less than half of a percentage point put him ahead of another candidate and allowed him to claim a spot in Sunday's runoff. The result ends the country's years under the so-called Correismo, a movement labeled after former President Rafael Correa, who governed Ecuador from 2007 through 2017, grew increasingly authoritarian in the latter years of his presidency and was sentenced to prison last year in a corruption scandal. Correa's protégé, Andrés Arauz, easily advanced to the contest to replace President Lenín Moreno, who chose not to seek reelection. Moreno was also an ally of Correa but turned against him while in office. In the runoff, Lasso benefited from the discontent toward Correa and his allies, but he will face a strong Correista bloc in Congress.