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American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Ecuador: Media fined for not carrying article

Four newspapers and three TV stations were fined US$3,750 each for not carrying a story on presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso.

Ecuador fines media for not publishing a story

Ecuador has fined seven media companies for not publishing a story that it deemed of public interest.

The state’s media watchdog said the press had a duty to cover a story about the supposed offshore dealings of opposition politician and recent presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso.

The investigation was published in an Argentine newspaper in March.

The watchdog and the media companies have accused each other of censorship. Appeals are under way.

The ruling was made against newspapers El Comercio, La Hora, Expreso and El Universo, and television channels Televicentro, Teleamazonas and Ecuavisa.
. . .

The report, “Lasso: the offshore tycoon”, was first published by Argentina’s left-wing Pagina 12 newspaper, and was picked up by various other Ecuadorean news outlets ahead of the country’s election on 2 April.

The Committee to Protect Journalists asserts that “No government anywhere, including in Ecuador, has any business telling the news media what to cover,” and reports,

In defending its actions before Supercom, lawyers for El Comercio argued that the original Página/12 story was poorly reported, failed to include a response from Lasso, and that publishing the unverified allegations would have violated an Ecuadoran law barring media from promoting or denigrating candidates immediately before elections.

Freedom House has rated Ecuador’s press status as “not free.”

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Ecuador: Partial recount results predictable

Predictably,

Following a recount of almost 1.3 million votes in Ecuador, the electoral council has confirmed left-wing candidate Lenín Moreno as the winner of the presidential poll held on 2 April.

The recount slightly boosted Mr Moreno’s margin over his conservative rival, Guillermo Lasso.

Mr Lasso had demanded a full recount citing allegations of fraud but the national electoral council only agreed to a recount of 10% of the votes.

Cue Capt. Louis,

Where’s the OAS?

But monitors from the Organization of American States said they considered “a recount of this magnitude and under these norms to be an exercise in transparency”.

More like an exercise in futility.

UPDATE:
Linked to by Silvio Canto. Thank you!



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Ecuador: Demonstrations on the street while Correa says left’s on the mend

The glass is half-full, and half-empty:

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa Sees Latin America’s Left on the Mend. ‘There are going to be a lot more triumphs for the left,’ departing leader says after his preferred candidate’s victory

President Rafael Correa has watched one after another of his leftist Latin American allies get impeached, beaten at the polls or excoriated as antidemocratic, as his own government faced growing disenchantment amid an economic downturn.

This week, he hailed a reversal in that trend as Ecuadoreans elected his preferred successor, former Vice President Lenin Moreno, in a tight race against a conservative rival. The outcome, he said, highlighted the left’s resilience at a moment when analysts see the region’s politics moving to the right.

“I think it marks an end to that change,” Mr. Correa said in an interview late Wednesday at the presidential palace. “We’ve won in very adverse conditions.”

while the demonstrators take to the streets and twitter,

“The people of Ecuador will NOT be fooled. We want democracy and freedom for all Ecuadorians asking for #RecountNOW”

The CNE says the results are “official and irreversible.”

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Today’s Capt. Louis Renault moment:

Ecuador National Electoral Council Says Vote Results Are Irreversible. Council says Lenin Moreno got 51.2% of the votes, with 48.8% for Guillermo Lasso, with almost all ballots counted

As you may recall, on election day early results showed Lasso ahead, them the CNE website went down, and when it went back up Moreno was declared the winner.

Now the CNE says the results are “official and irreversible.”

Cue Cpt. Louis,

Lasso is holding a press conference right now,

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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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Ecuador: No official winner yet

As of 9:40am Eastern:
As reported yesterday, early results showed opposition candidate Guillermo Lasso as the winner of yesterday’s presidential election, while later in the evening the CNE (National Election Council) declared Lenín Moreno as winning the preliminary count.

The CNE website is now up, showing as of the writing of this post:

Lasso 48.8% with 4,813,217 votes
Moreno 51.16% with 5,0142,295

However, last night the CNE’s results showed otherwise. Argentinian journalist Jorge Lanata tweeted a screen capture showing Lasso ahead on total votes and Moreno ahead by 2+ percentage points, with the comment,
“#IMustSay ECUADOR is the first country where 4,621,654 voters equals 48.93%. And 4,523,513 equals 51.07%. #Fraud”

Lasso tweeted a screen capture, “This is only one example of the records showing inconsistencies. They’ve switched their votes for ours.”

Also last night AP reported

Thousands of outraged supporters of opposition Ecuadorean presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso shouted “fraud” and broke through metal barricades to almost reach the entrance of the electoral council’s headquarters in Quito before being pushed back by police. A similar scuffle took place outside the electoral offices in Guayaquil.

The WSJ this morning,

With 95% of the votes counted late Sunday, Mr. Moreno had 51.11% support, compared with 48.89% for Guillermo Lasso, the national electoral council said on its website. It has yet to officially announce a winner.

A quick count by Participacion Ciudadana, a Quito-based nongovernment organization that promotes democracy, said there was a technical tie between the candidates.

Here’s this morning’s press conference,

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