Correa hails victory for the left in Ecuador

Ecuador is poised to join the tide of Latin American countries voting for left-wing leaders after Rafael Correa, an economist, took a resounding lead in exit polls over Alvaro Noboa, a billionaire. Correa, a former finance minister with an economics doctorate from the University of Illinois, has promised to renegotiate the country's foreign debt and focus spending on relieving intense poverty in the Andean nation. "This is a clear message that the people want change," 43-year-old Correa said after provisional results gave him two-thirds of the vote. Noboa, Ecuador's wealthiest man with holdings ranging from bananas to the building sector, has rejected the results and said he might demand a recount. A Correa victory will see Ecuador join Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Chile and Brazil in electing left-wing leaders in the past year. The scale of this popular rejection of the neo-liberal policies that dominated the region in the 1990s, enshrined in the Washington Consensus, has caused alarm in the US government, which has seen its influence sharply curbed. Mark Weisbrot, regional analyst from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said the swing had come after 25 years of disastrous economic failure that has stymied growth and mired millions in poverty. "What you've seen in these elections is the people going over the heads of the political establishment because they need change," he said. In a campaign following the style of others in the region, the arch-conservative Noboa portrayed his rival as a dangerous stooge of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. The other external figure to loom large in campaigning was George Bush, the US President. Correa has used criticism of the intensely unpopular White House occupant, whom he referred to as a "dimwit," to rally voters to his campaign. He has said that in office he would shut down a US military base in the country and reject a free-trade pact with Washington. Noboa, who counts the Kennedys and Rockefellers among his friends, put his wealth at center stage in a glitzy run that would have embarrassed Italy's Silvio Berlusconi. After doling out free computers and medicines at rallies he was reported to have handed one man a $500 bill. His campaign account was frozen after he exceeded by more than $250,000 the $687,068 spending limit. "In addition to overspending, Noboa's first-round success was also the result of non-stop dirty campaigning," said Danielle Ryan from the Washington-based Center for Hemisphere Affairs.