ELECTIONS: Uncertainty and Anger

ECUADOR - In Brief 20 Feb 2017 by Magdalena Barreiro

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By 10:20 this morning 88.4% of votes have been counted giving the official candidate Lenin Moreno 39.11% of valid votes and Guillermo Lasso 28.30%. With these results, a second round will be necessary. However, we will have to wait for the official announcement from the National Electoral Council (CNE) for a final verdict given the closeness of Moreno to reach 40% of valid votes and the fact that he has more than the necessary 10% above Lasso --both necessary conditions to win the elections in just one round.Trying to make sense out of the available math and statistics, here is what we have. The change in Moreno´s vote has been of 0.01% for around 7% of additional votes counted. There is still a 12% to be counted which, with a one on one relationship between votes counted and votes for Lenin, his total votes would be around 39.13% --not enough to win the election in just one round.The rumors of fraud are everywhere on the social media and hundreds of citizens especially in Quito are protesting in front of the CNE building demanding for transparency and respect for the popular decision. Social media is over flooded with anger and suspect given the obvious problems in many electoral sites. Thus, although Lenin Moreno made a statement a few minutes ago tacitly accepting the second round as he said: "now it is between me and you, Mr. Lasso", there is still high uncertainty among Ecuadorians, us included.There is just one indisputable fact: 65% of Ecuadorians do not want this government to continue. We are awaiting to see if that is enough to bring a political change to the country.