Ecuador’s Next President Will Face Debt, Drought, and Gangs

Will Freeman is a fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ecuador is one of South America’s smaller nations, but it faces daunting challenges. In just a few years, it has gone from being one of mainland Latin America’s most peaceful countries to its most violent, overrun by cocaine-trafficking gangs. Ecuador also faces an energy crisis, as climate change-fueled droughts test its hydroelectric-dependent energy grid and cause blackouts, anemic growth, and rising debt. The president that Ecuadoreans choose in an April 13 runoff vote—which will pit incumbent Daniel Noboa against opposition candidate Luisa González—needs to put the country on a new course or watch each of these crises deepen.

What are the main takeaways from the first round of the presidential vote?

Given the circumstances, the result is a strong showing for Noboa, who leads the ruling National Democratic Action (ADN) party. Despite January being one of the most violent months on record, dim economic growth prospects, and last year’s nationwide blackouts caused by an energy crisis, Noboa hasn’t lost popularity as quickly as other recent Ecuadorean presidents. This could be for a few reasons: his effective digital campaign ad strategy, his image as a young politician—Noboa is thirty-seven years old, which has distanced him from the political polarization that roiled Ecuador in the 2000s and 2010s—and the modest initial results of his anti-crime policies. Many Noboa voters also appear to be patient and willing to give him more time given that he took office after 2023 snap elections, which were triggered by then President Guillermo Lasso’s dissolution of the legislature, and has only served for a short sixteen months.

González’s almost equally strong performance suggests the leftist Citizen Revolution Movement (RC) party could be poised for a comeback. The party’s polarizing founder and leader, former President Rafael Correa (2007–17), has been in exile in Europe for more than seven years, avoiding serving out a corruption sentence he and his followers deem procedurally flawed and unjust. In that time, the RC party lost much of its earlier force. While it retains a loyal base that makes up around a third of the electorate, the party has struggled to raise the ceiling on its support and win votes from centrist and Indigenous voters who still associate Correa’s later years in office with corruption scandals and an autocratic governing style. RC mobilized its base to win narrow victories in first-round elections in 2021 and 2023, but then lost both, hemmed in by this ceiling. 

It remains unclear whether González, who lost the last election in 2023, can change that dynamic this time. If she does, it would mark a surprise comeback for a party and ex-president from an earlier era of Latin American politics when the populist left was ascendant across the region. It would also increase the chances of Correa seeing his arrest warrant canceled and returning to the country to once again play a large role in its politics—a possibility that frightens his critics and excites many of his supporters. 

What happens next?

The runoff is likely to be close. Important to either candidate’s victory will be the ability to win support among Ecuador’s sizable but politically divided Indigenous movement. In this first-round election, the Indigenous-aligned Pachakutik party, led by candidate Leonidas Iza, won around 5 percent of the presidential vote and a similar share of seats in the legislature. It now has the potential to wield great leverage, although Iza could just as well squander it, having already refused to endorse either Noboa or González. 

The results also show that after years of fragmenting, Ecuador’s politics are, at least for now, recentralizing around two main blocks: Noboa’s ADN party and the RC party, which between them won more than 90 percent of seats in the national assembly. This could have some positive consequences. Ecuadorean presidents have often struggled to build legislative majorities and implement policy in recent years, spending much of their time and energy cobbling together unwieldy, often fragile legislative coalitions. It could also lower the chances that the next president will see his or her term cut short by the threat of impeachment, much like Lasso’s. 

But there are also risks. One is that the recentralization isn’t happening entirely organically and will leave a substantial portion of voters feeling disenfranchised. Millionaire businessman and tough-on-crime candidate Jan Topić, who polled in third as recently as September at around 15 percent was banned from running in the November election by an electoral court for allegedly failing to divest from state contracts. Topić denies he benefited from any state contracts, and some analysts argue his exclusion rested on weak evidence.

What’s at stake for Ecuador and South America?

Security. The biggest issue is whether Noboa or González can address increased criminal violence in the country. In 2023, Ecuador became mainland Latin America’s most violent country as cocaine traffickers turned its ports into major conduits for shipping the drug to the United States and Europe, sparking turf wars. Previously, Ecuador was one of the region’s safest countries. Recent judicial investigations have led to arrests of judges and politicians for allegedly colluding with organized crime groups, suggesting that corruption has co-opted important parts of the state. 

Restoring security is a tall order for a country that has never had to contend with such challenges before. By suspending some legal guarantees and deploying the military to conduct domestic law enforcement, Noboa reduced homicides by 17 percent between in 2024, increased drug seizures, and achieved better control of formerly gang-run prisons. But in January, the murder rate surged upwards again, and human rights groups have raised concerns about arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings by security forces. 

Noboa promises to continue deploying the military, increase access to social services in high-crime areas, improve control of jails, create programs to reincorporate ex-convicts into society, and generate jobs. He has also pledged to build two new maximum-security jails, one of which is currently under construction. 

González, meanwhile, calls for reestablishing Correa-era institutions to coordinate security policy and oversee the judiciary, internal investigations of the security forces to root out corruption, and crime prevention through job creation. 

Both candidates’ proposals include reasonable ideas but are short on the specifics. There is no surefire formula for safeguarding the state from organized crime, corruption, and quelling violence, but it could require more radical steps than either candidate is proposing. This could mean substantially increasing spending on civilian police or inviting an independent international commission to investigate crime’s penetration of the state as occurred in Guatemala between 2007 and 2019.

Energy and the economy. Noboa and González both propose diversifying energy sources, as Ecuador relies heavily on hydroelectric dams and droughts have recently caused prolonged blackouts. González wants the state to play a greater role in the energy sector. 

They also both promise to diversify the economy, build infrastructure, and expand anti-poverty programs. But financing these plans will be difficult. The country is currently one of South America’s slowest growing economies, and its foreign debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) has increased by more than a third since 2017. While González has promised to conduct an audit of the country’s debt, neither candidate is promising de-dollarization. 

Justice. Another question that is not technically on the ballot but will be decisive for the country’s future has to do with the selection of a new top prosecutor in April after current Attorney General Diana Salazar Méndez’s term ends. Salazar built an image as a tough prosecutor willing to pursue high-level corruption and organized crime cases, but Correa and his followers have repeatedly accused her of political bias and ineffectiveness. Whoever replaces her will have significant influence over the country’s future, either intensifying investigation into organized crime corruption or deepening impunity. Although the process of selecting candidates is supposed to be apolitical, it is rarely so in practice—meaning the next president will likely matter.

Foreign relations. Ecuador does not have the geostrategic significance of other Latin American countries such as Mexico or Panama. Today, its greatest impact on foreign countries comes in terms of drugs—strengthening cocaine producers in Colombia and Peru as a conduit for exporting their product—and as a source of migrants to the United States. U.S. Customs and Border Protection have encountered Ecuadorean migrants more than 270,000 times at the U.S.-Mexico border since fiscal year 2022. Since last year, out-migration has been decreasing. If either president can stabilize the security situation, migration is likely to fall further. 

Looking toward the United States, Noboa, whose father was a friend of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would almost certainly maintain a closer relationship with the Donald Trump administration than González, whose leftist party Trump administration officials view with suspicion. That could increase Noboa’s chances of successfully negotiating a free trade agreement with the United States. Compared to Noboa, González might be more open to deepening ties to China. But China—having bet on Ecuador before only to see the country drift after Correa—is unlikely to do so in a major way again, especially given that its lending to the region has declined sharply over the last decade while Chinese foreign direct investment in Latin America has flatlined.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.