Pro-Market Conservative Lasso Wins Ecuadorean Presidency

Former banker and 'Superminister of the Economy' Guillermo Lasso won Sunday's presidential run-off election in Ecuador, defeating leftist candidate Andres Arauz by 52.5% of the vote to 47.5%.

• The two candidates offered starkly different outlooks for Ecuador, which like a number of other Latin American nations saw mass protests against the gov't in 2019 and has experienced a significant wave of COVID-19 infections and fatalities.
• Arauz became closely associated with former leftist president Rafael Correra, who led the country from 2007 to 2017 before a corruption conviction resulted in his fleeing to Belgium. Arauz had also proposed the scrapping of IMF-recommended austerity measures brought in under outgoing leftist President Lenin Moreno.
• Lasso - who came in second place in the two previous presidential elecitons - fought on a pro-market, national unity ticket, stating that he wanted to bring the country together as a third of the population fell into poverty over the past year due to the pandemic.
• Following an economic collapse in 1999, Lasso served for several months as the newly-created Super Minister of Economy under President Jamil Mahuad, negotiating with the IMF over economic support and tasked with reinvigorating the economy.