Ecuador’s presidential candidate Luisa Gonzalez wants to increase social expenditures

Luisa Gonzalez, a socialist from Ecuador, claims that her proposals to increase social welfare spending and toughen punishments for offenders will be more effective than what she refers to as current President Daniel Noboa’s haphazard policies. However, she will have a difficult time winning the presidential election on Sunday.

Gonzalez is running for the Citizens’ Revolution party, which is led by her mentor, former President Rafael Correa. Gonzalez lost to Noboa in a 2023 snap election after being elected to fill the rest of his predecessor’s term.

Numerous surveys predict that 47-year-old attorney Gonzalez, who would become Ecuador’s first female president, and 37-year-old business heir Noboa would face battle in an April runoff. Some predict that Noboa will win the opening round.

“The country cannot improvise,” Gonzalez stated in a late January radio interview. “It requires knowledge, a team and experience, that’s clearly what we have in Citizens’ Revolution and with Luisa Gonzalez.”

Gonzalez claims that in addition to pursuing allegedly dishonest judges and prosecutors, she would launch significant military and police operations in response to Ecuador’s drug-fueled crime wave. She also wants to boost social expenditures in violent regions, build renewable energy projects, and provide small and women-owned enterprises low-interest loans.

Although Gonzalez and 14 other candidates have criticized Noboa for the ongoing street violence, none of them have offered a meaningful security plan that deviates from the strict anti-crime policies he is already implementing.

Correa and Gonzalez initially met at a government function in Riobamba, Andes. After joining his office in 2008, she led two government secretariats until winning a seat in the legislature in 2021.

Correa, who ruled until 2017 and currently resides in Belgium, was given an eight-year prison term in 2020 on corruption charges that he claims are political persecution.

If Gonzalez wins, several Citizens’ Revolution candidates for the legislature have stated that Correa will return to Ecuador and that former vice president Jorge Glas, who is now serving a jail sentence for corruption charges, will be allowed to accept an asylum offer from Mexico.

In the coastal city of Guayaquil, 20-year-old Mayito Villacis stated, “Luisa is an intelligent woman and totally capable of getting us out of the mire we are trapped in.” “We must recover our country and erase Noboa from our history.”

Gonzalez, who identifies as a sportswoman, animal lover, and single mother, has stated that if she is elected president, she will make the choices rather than Correa.

“I won’t stop until Ecuador has been revived,” Gonzalez declared in a video commercial. “Whenever they tell me something is impossible, that’s when I’m most convinced it’s possible.”