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00:00Christopher Zabattini from the London Senior Research Fellow for Latin America at the Chatham House on the Americas programme.
00:07Great to talk to you this evening, Christopher.
00:09Thanks, Gavin.
00:10First of all, give us a sense of the reality of the security situation for Ecuadorians.
00:14I mentioned that figure that we heard from the incumbent president saying that we're talking about more than 10,000 people,
00:21women, men, teenagers within several gangs, that this is what he calls a narco-trafficker situation.
00:27Tell us how that sort of sets itself in terms of everyday life and the issues, fears that are dominating voters' concerns.
00:37As one of your interviewees talked about, Ecuador has really been relatively quiet.
00:42It hasn't been affected by the civil wars of Colombia or a lot of the narco-trafficking in Colombia.
00:49Also in Peru, it did not have, which had two large terrorist organisations, guerrilla organisations.
00:54Ecuador has been a relatively peaceful country between those two war-torn countries.
01:01But what's happened is with the peace development plan in Colombia, with improvements in security in Peru,
01:08and also now with the moving in of both Mexican cartels and Albanian mafia groups,
01:14it has become the epicentre for transshipment of cocaine, a large part of it actually to Europe.
01:20And so with that has come both the consolidation of a number of gangs in Ecuador.
01:25They're linking up with international crime syndicates.
01:29But it's a country that never has been really prepared for it.
01:32Police have been weak.
01:33The military has never had to confront an internal surgery.
01:36So this is really a country that has very little historical experience dealing with this.
01:40And the people also have very little tolerance for this.
01:42So we see the results, but Noboa has tried in his now 16 months in office to try to increase the police presence,
01:51increase also the army's presence on the streets.
01:53But it hasn't been having much effect.
01:55You're looking at about 38 people per 100,000 murdered in the country,
02:01which is one of the highest rates, as you mentioned, Gavin, in South America.
02:04Yeah, it's fascinating, Christopher.
02:05When we look at the fact that I think go back to January, more than 700 people were killed in Ecuador.
02:10And Daniel Noboa talking about one of the issues is the fact that there used to be a rise in crime and violent crime
02:16every time there was a crop yield of the cocoa.
02:20And suddenly there's two yields a year, given how vast this economy and this growing is now in the country.
02:26Tell us about the two very different propositions we have here, the choice of the left and the right,
02:29one who's associated himself, hasn't he, recently with Donald Trump, a photo op in recent days,
02:34and Luisa Gonzalez as well, who managed to get Amaritan saying she's got the left support,
02:38she's got support of the key indigenous party as well, hasn't she?
02:43Yeah, these are two very different candidates, as you mentioned.
02:46Luisa Gonzalez comes from the party of Rafael Correa, who was president before,
02:52who's now in self-imposed exile in Belgium.
02:54His wife is Belgian, under corruption charges in his home country.
02:59Rafael Correa is really seen as sort of a mentor to Luisa Gonzalez,
03:04and he had the good fortune of being able to govern the country during the commodities boom of the early aughts.
03:10And so a lot of people associate him with better times in Ecuador, better rates of economic growth.
03:16Growth this year is probably going to be less than 2%.
03:18The country just negotiated earlier an IMF deal to try to sort of bolster its public finances.
03:25So it's in difficult economic straits, and she's promising more focus on employment,
03:30more focus on small and rural communities.
03:33Whereas Elvido, I'm sorry, Daniel Noboa, his father is Elvido Noboa, who's the richest man in Ecuador.
03:39The huge banana tycoon, right?
03:41Yes, yes.
03:42Yes, exactly, exactly.
03:44He ran for president five times, never was elected, but I guess his son went on to do what he couldn't,
03:49and he was elected president.
03:50He's also, they're both focusing very much on security.
03:54Luisa Gonzalez is promising more reforms, but she is promising a more humane approach to the issue of addressing insecurity in the country.
04:04Whereas Daniel Noboa, just recently, as you mentioned, the conversations he's had with Donald Trump,
04:08he went to the inauguration, he visited him in Mar-a-Lago.
04:10He also just negotiated in March a deal with Eric Pence, who's a close Trump supporter who runs Blackwater,
04:18the, if you will, mercenary group that was staffing out a lot of the occupation forces in Iraq.
04:24And he's promised to try to bring more security.
04:26So even though both candidates are focusing on security, the truth is,
04:31Daniel Noboa is much closely, more closely tied to Trump and much more closely tied to using the military to address this issue.
04:37Which is very interesting, as we're seeing Eric Prince there and the Blackwater company in Ecuador,
04:42which is also the fact that he's very recently been giving interviews, Daniel Noboa,
04:45saying he wants international assistance in dealing with these narco traffickers, as he calls them,
04:49from the US, the UK, Brazil as well.
04:52How is that strategy seen, along with the strategy of getting his own personal security,
04:56I believe, is from Blackwater right now?
04:58How is that coming down with voters?
05:00And I think the opposition are also picking up on that, aren't they?
05:03Suggesting that he's bringing in his own mercenaries.
05:05That's exactly right.
05:08In the debate, Luisa Gonzalez criticized him for bringing in outside groups that are unaccountable.
05:16And clearly, there's an element of that.
05:19The truth is, the answer isn't going to come by bringing in armed groups internationally.
05:23What it requires is building up a justice system, which it was riddled with corruption,
05:27improving the prison system, which he has done a little bit,
05:30but many of the gangs have been running their business from within the walls of these prisons,
05:34as well as strengthening the military.
05:37And that's something that has to happen locally.
05:40Now, I think the international assistance and financing and training is all very important.
05:44We have to recognize Ecuador's woes right now, in terms of security, are not of its own making.
05:49Again, this is a country that has been largely peaceful, but now is being overrun by narcotics traffickers
05:54because they're serving cocaine in markets in Europe and the United States and elsewhere.
05:58So it's a real obligation for countries in Europe and in the United States to be able to provide assistance.
06:04But the path is not one of hiring mercenaries.
06:07The path is what we saw in Colombia, under Plan Colombia,
06:10is strengthening state capacity to address issues of justice and security locally.
06:14Christopher, it has just gone eight o'clock here in Paris.
06:18It's gone one o'clock in the afternoon in Quito right now.
06:21Briefly, do you have a sense when we will get a sense of how it's looking, how the polling is going?
06:28We'll see. The polls close at five o'clock in Ecuador.
06:32One thing that's interesting is, as you mentioned, the race was neck and neck in the first round.
06:38Both candidates received 44 percent.
06:41And oddly, Daniel Noboa claimed that there was fraud.
06:43He had been predicted to get over 50 percent, which would have avoided a second round.
06:48So there's a real chance here that if he loses, he may claim fraud.
06:52Take a page again from Donald Trump's playbook or Jair Bolsonaro's playbook in Brazil
06:56and try to overturn the election.
06:59So we really don't know when this will go.
07:01If he wins outright, obviously he'll back away from those.
07:05But there is a risk that even though we may know the details,
07:09and it's a modernized polling system, so we should get the details by tonight.
07:12But we don't know whether he'll accept it.
07:15Christopher, pleasure to talk to you tonight.
07:17Christopher Zabattini from Chetton House.
07:18Thank you so much.