Ecuador's President Expecting Easy Win

QUITO, Ecuador -- If there is anything President Rafael Correa has mastered in his two years in office, it is how to win elections.

From his victory in the presidential election in 2006 to the national referendums on his agenda to create a new constitution, Correa has faced the judgment of his people repeatedly and come away validated. On Sunday, Ecuadorans will vote again -- the fifth national vote since 2006 -- and polls predict that Correa will have little trouble winning reelection.

"We have a president with enormous personal charisma," said Alberto Acosta, who was the president of Ecuador's Constitutional Assembly. "There are many reasons that Correa continues to be popular. An important one is that he is a president that has followed through on a large part of his promises."

Correa, a 46-year-old economist trained in Belgium and the United States, was helped early in his term by a relative boom in oil prices that has allowed him to spend lavishly on education, health and roads, and to give cash to the poor. His approval rating has hovered around 70 percent. He has closed the old congress, pushed through a new constitution, regularly criticized the news media and refused to pay his nation's debts that he considers illegitimate. He has defined himself whenever possible as a departure from Ecuador's volatile and corrupt past.

"He is seen by the population as a person that is confronting the conventional power, and he has an image of renewal," said Adrián Bonilla, director of FLACSO, a graduate school in Quito, the capital. "The opposition is devastated."

For a country that has had 10 presidents since 1997, stability is no small accomplishment. But many Ecuadorans say the hard part is just beginning. The country faces a financial pinch similar to that felt across the region: an oil-producing nation grappling with lower petroleum prices, fewer remittances from Ecuadorans abroad and declining exports.

"The idea, when we had a lot of money, was to spend this money," said a government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The best way to save is to invest."

Correa's critics say that his brand of socialism has only exacerbated the problem by scaring away foreign investment and that he cannot keep paying for his popular social programs to the same degree.

"It is a virtual dictatorship," said Álvaro Noboa, a banana magnate who is running for president for the fourth time. "Correa has been favoring social war between poor and rich, between employees and entrepreneurs, and with that scenario, investors do not want to come to Ecuador."

Correa's response to the economic crisis has attracted criticism. He has raised tariffs on hundreds of imports, creating some of the most protectionist policies in the world. Ecuador has defaulted on about a third of its $10 billion foreign debt. The government has offered to buy back its bonds at 30 cents on the dollar.

"Correa practically doesn't have a plan to get Ecuador out of the crisis," said Lucio Gutiérrez, a former president who took power in a coup in 2003, was ousted in a popular revolt in 2005 and is running again this year. "The only thing he did, which I think was an incorrect measure, was to restrict imports."

Sunday's election was set by the passage of the country's new constitution in September, which lowered the voting age to 16 and for the first time allows police, soldiers and some prisoners to vote.

Voters are also choosing local government positions and a National Assembly. To win the presidency in Sunday's first round, a candidate must capture more than 50 percent of the vote or have more than 40 percent with at least a 10 percent margin over the next candidate. If such numbers are not reached, the election goes to a second round.

Some members of Correa's government expressed concern that although he remains popular, many people are apathetic about his "revolution."

"The people are not collaborating," the government official said. "Here the revolution is aesthetic."

Some are concerned that Correa's support within his party, Alianza Pais, is fragmented, and that a rule in the new constitution that allows the assembly to vote to remove the president, if it also disbands the assembly, poses a risk to Correa if the economic problems worsen.

"We know that these were two years of campaigning," the government official said. "What is coming are the problems of governing."