The youngest president ever
Daniel Noboa, at 35, is the youngest candidate ever to win a presidential election in Ecuador. His performance in the first presidential debate raised votes from young people, and this together with a strong 50% vote against the Correistas, helped him to succeed. He is a businessman in charge of the largest and richest corporation in Ecuador, Bananera Noboa, and all its associated businesses. Noboa showed pragmatism in his political approach and developed a non-confrontational strategy that rendered good results.
Noboa has little public service experience but was a legislator in the past Assembly. Thus, he has more exposure to the difficulties of political negotiation than did President Lasso when he was elected in 2020.
Although there are many pressing issues, the new government will have two major priorities that must be addressed immediately given the short period of time it has ahead: security and liquidity.
Insecurity and organized crime are exacting a high economic and social toll. People are eagerly awaiting strong, effective, and immediate action on this front. Faulty decisions or inaction will jeopardize Noboa’s intention to launch a referendum in the first 100 days. Although changes to the judicial sector to better combat corruption and organized crime are at the core of the referendum, President Noboa needs to show visible, even if small, achievements quickly or people might not wait 100 days to become disappointed or frustrated. What happened with President Lasso must be a lesson to consider.
A dry fiscal till does not make any government’s plan easy, and the Noboa government will need money to combat crime, face the destruction El Niño may bring, and finance investment if it wants to fulfill its promise of reducing unemployment. Money can only come from IMF and other multilaterals, but Noboa must present a decent fiscal plan to convince these organizations to bring money to the table. The private sector is already paying close to $1m/day to fight crime and insecurity. In this context, raising taxes seems a difficult path to take unless individuals pay the toll. Thus, subsidies are once again the first priority to address on the economic side.
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