Ecuador Presidential Race Won by Social Democrat

Rodrigo Borja, a soft-spoken left-of-center intellectual, won a convincing victory in Ecuador’s presidential election Sunday, defeating feisty populist Abdala Bucaram in a race characterized more by its crude language than quality in political debate.

Borja won 1,762,588 votes to Bucaram’s 1,572,481, a margin of nearly 200,000 votes, with all but a handful of votes counted, unofficial returns compiled by the nation’s commercial television networks.

In giving the victory to Borja, Ecuador’s voters opted for a traditional social democrat from the nation’s political mainstream and rejected a populist who had shrieked out his campaign speeches, portraying Borja as the devil and casting explicit aspersions on his manhood. Borja had responded that Bucaram was a “mad man” and a “barbarian.”

Will Work Together

In a subdued television interview in which he conceded defeat, Bucaram congratulated Borja and said, “What is most important now is to defend this electoral process and to consolidate the democracy we have achieved in Ecuador.”

He said he will work with Borja, who takes office Aug. 10 for a four-year term.

Borja told national television: “We want to establish social justice along with economic growth. We want a balance between the needs of the people and the nation’s production.”

In Quito, Borja’s stronghold, delirious supporters honked horns in car processions through the downtown streets after word of Borja’s victory became apparent.

Borja not only won handily in Quito, the upland capital city, but also made strong inroads into Bucaram’s power base, the grimy, sprawling port city of Guayaquil, to win the runoff election in his third campaign for the presidency.

The two left-of-center candidates finished first and second in the 10-person, first-round vote Jan. 31. That result was a thorough rejection of incumbent conservative President Leon Febres Cordero, one of President Reagan’s strongest allies in Latin America. Febres Cordero was barred by law from seeking reelection, but his candidate, Sixto Duran, finished third and was eliminated.

Ties With Nicaragua

Both Borja, 52, and Bucaram, 36, pledged to distance Ecuador from the United States and to restore diplomatic ties with leftist Nicaragua. They pledged to impose greater state control over the economy, in contrast with Febres Cordero’s free-market policies.

Borja, a university political science professor and international law expert with little charisma, had lost in the first round of voting in 1979 when populist Jaime Roldos won and then lost again narrowly to Febres Cordero in 1984.

Since then, his Democratic Left party has built a solid national organization in a country with 16 traditionally weak parties. Borja will have a solid majority in Congress, offering the prospect of government harmony after high-handed Febres Cordero’s constant, debilitating legal battles with the legislature.

Ecuador, despite a history of constant coups and 17 different constitutions, now has held three successive elections on schedule. This nation of 10 million led South America’s move away from military regimes to civilian, democratic administrations in 1979. Six other countries have followed suit since then.

Voting in Schoolyards

The election appeared fair and well-organized. In schoolyards around the country, Indian women wearing felt hats and and carrying infants strapped to their backs in blankets lined up with men in business suits to vote in secret behind wooden screens.

In Villa Flora, a working-class suburb south of Quito, retired air force officer David Rene Pinto, 49, said he voted for Borja because “Bucaram wants to be a Somoza, he wants to rule for 40 years, he wants to be a dictator.” Pinto was referring to Anastasio Somoza, the Nicaraguan dictator who was deposed in 1979.

Pinto said that some Ecuadoreans had wanted to believe Bucaram’s wild promises.

“If he says, ‘I’m going to give you each an airplane,’ some people believe it,” he said. “But Bucaram is not the solution for the economic problems of this country.”

Falling oil prices have slashed oil income, and the government has halted payments on the $9.4-billion foreign debt. Inflation is nearly 60% a year.