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Ecuador: OAS congratulates Moreno

Luis Almagro, head of the Organization of American States, made it official,

The WSJ has the details:
Ecuador Presidential Vote Fair, Says Election Observer. International election observes didn’t find evidence of fraud in vote, OAS says; group congratulates ruling-party candidate Lenin Moreno

Mr. Moreno, who changed his profile on his Twitter account to president-elect of Ecuador, was congratulated on Monday by the leaders of Peru, Chile and Argentina, as well as the OAS’s secretary-general. In a statement, the Washington, D.C.-based OAS urged Mr. Lasso to address any of his fraud complaints through Ecuador’s institutions.

“There were no discrepancies between the analyzed ballots and the official data,” it said. The organization sent 77 observers to 480 polling stations across Ecuador, including at the electoral council’s data center.

Many Believe That the Left’s Election Victory in Ecuador Was Fraudulent:

. . . three out of the four exit polls released as voting concluded on Sunday showed Lasso with a lead between three and six points. Exit polls can be wrong, but the one that predicted a Lasso win of six points was spot-on in predicting the results of the first round of voting in February. In that election, leftist Lenín Moreno (yes, his first name was given him for ideological reasons) won 39 percent of the vote, narrowly missing an outright victory that wouldn’t have required a runoff. The final results of that first round were delayed for days, as the government-controlled election machinery stalled and dithered until finally admitting that a runoff was needed.

Even more disturbing was the decision of President Rafael Correa, who handpicked Moreno as his chosen successor, to fire General Luis Castro Ayala as the chief of staff of the Ecuadorean army after the first round. General Castro Ayala is said to have played a crucial role, through his moral influence on the National Election Council, in ensuring an accurate count of the first election round. The day after the first round of voting, he sent a letter to the Joint Command of the Armed Forces, requesting that it consider its constitutional responsibilities to ensure an accurate count. Following his firing, General Castro Ayala told the media that “the armed forces did not handle the entire chain of custody of the ballots in these last elections” as it is normally charged with doing.

Lasso will be challenging the results in all of Ecuador’s 24 provinces,

Part of the problem is the opposition’s distrust of the National Electoral Council, which it says has become an appendage of the executive in the way the electoral board in Venezuela has all but lost independence under President Nicolas Maduro, a key ally of Correa.

As for Assange,

“I cordially invite Lasso to leave Ecuador within 30 days (with or without his tax haven millions)”

UPDATE
The WaPo’s Nick Miroff (who’s married to the daughter of Cuban G-2 founder and KGB protege Manuel “Barbarroja” Piniero) declares that Lenín Moreno, A kinder, gentler leftist aims to bridge angry divisions after Ecuador win.

That’s “democratic socialism” for ya.

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