The Wave Keeps On: Ecuador Elects Leftist President

Leftist Rafael Correa, a 43 year-old middle-class economist, beat billionaire banana magnate Alvaro Noboa in Ecuador’s runoff presidential election on November 26, capturing two-thirds of the vote. Ecuador now joins Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Chile and Brazil in electing leftist chief executives within the last year. Correa is the eighth president of Ecuador in a decade. He is a friend of Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, but it appears he will steer an independent course. Correa said during the campaign, “I am a humanist, a Christian, a leftist; humanist because for me politics and economics are in the service of humanity; Christian because I was nurtured in the social doctrine of the Church; and leftist because I believe in fairness, justice and the supremacy of labor over capital.” He also said “It is necessary to overcome all the fallacies of neoliberalism,” and that he advocates “Socialism for the twenty-first century.”