Likely Leftist Victory in Ecuador Election Rejects "Oligarch's Candidate"
Published on Monday, April 03, 2017
byCommon Dreams
Julian Assange also expected to stay in Ecuadorian embassy in London after tense election ends with leftist candidate Lenín Moreno as president
by Nadia Prupis, staff writer
A nail-biting election in Ecuador appeared to end Sunday with leftist candidate Lenín Moreno winning the presidency over conservative Guillermo Lasso.
The National Electoral Council declared Moreno the winner by 51 percent, just minutes after another organization had said the race was a technical tie with both candidates being within 0.6 percentage points of each other.
Lasso demanded a recount as his supporters protested.
Moreno, leader of the ruling party, is seen as the political successor to outgoing President Rafael Correa. Moreno also previously served as Correa's vice president.
William K. Black, lawyer and academic, wrote an op-ed for Common Dreams last week that described Lasso as "a leader in aiding Ecuador's oligarchs to evade taxation through offshore tax havens" whose "platform is the standard right-wing recipe that caused Ecuador's recurrent economic, social, and political crises."
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http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/04/03/likely-leftist-victory-ecuador-election-rejects-oligarchs-candidate