Protesters interrupted the start on Monday of an election campaign tour by former Brazilian president Lula da Silva, who leads opinion polls but faces a lengthy jail sentence for corruption. Police had to intervene to separate some 150 protesting farmers and Lula's supporters in Bage, where the populist leader was starting a bus tour of southern Brazil ahead of October 7 elections.
Ecuadoreans on Sunday voted to prevent presidents from holding more than two terms in office, according to the elections council, a win for President Lenin Moreno that blocks his mentor-turned-adversary Rafael Correa from returning to power. The results from the referendum, called by Moreno, roll back a measure Correa pushed through Congress in 2015 to allow unlimited presidential re-election.
When Ecuadorians vote on Sunday barring former president Rafael Correa from re-election, they will also be choosing whether to buck a trend across South America in which overbearing former presidents just can’t let go of power.
Ecuador has chosen a new vice president to replace Jorge Glas, who was sentenced to six years in jail for his role in a bribery scheme involving Odebrecht, the Brazilian company at the center of Latin America’s biggest corruption scandal. Lawmakers selected Maria Alejandra Vicuña in a vote on Saturday.
Ecuador's ruling Country Alliance party, founded by former president Rafael Correa over a decade ago, has removed President Lenin Moreno as its head, citing repeated failures in leadership, as a schism between the former allies deepens.
Paraguay has stated it is time to put an end to the ideological bias of the Union of South American Nations, Unasur, and recover its integration profile which was the main purpose of its creation. A foreign ministers summit of the region will address and advance the issue.
Socialist candidate Lenin Moreno had a slim lead Sunday in Ecuador’s presidential runoff, setting up a tense wait for the final count in a race that could change the political map of Latin America.Moreno, the designated heir to a decade of President Rafael Correa’s “21st-century socialism,” had 51.07% of the vote to 48.93% for conservative ex-banker Guillermo Lasso, with 94.2% of districts reporting, said the National Electoral Council.
Voters in Ecuador will be going to the polls on Sunday for the presidential runoff and a choice between a traditional South American leftist and a conservative ex-banker, that will steer the oil exporting country for the next four years. It will also show if South Americans are effectively abandoning populist ideas as happened in Argentina, Peru and Brazil.
The latest release of public opinion polls ahead of next Sunday's (April 2) presidential runoff in Ecuador show the ruling party candidate Lenin Moreno winning by a margin of 4.5 percentage points. The Cedatos poll conducted between March 18th and 21st, showed the ruling party candidate with 52.4% of the vote compared to opposition leader Guillermo Lasso‘s 47.6% (a 4.8% difference).
Ecuador's electoral commission has formally ruled that a runoff election will be needed to choose a successor for socialist President Rafael Correa. The body's announcement on Wednesday confirms its earlier indication that ruling party candidate Lenin Moreno and conservative former banker Guillermo Lasso will face off in an April 2 vote.