Rebecca Ryan - Ecuador: Oct 16, 2006
October 16, 2006
Ecuadorian Elections
The elections in Ecuador were this weekend. Elections were on Sunday, but election preparation took the whole weekend. They had a "cooling off" period with no propaganda, so it was very quiet without all of the music that has been modified to support candidates. (Shakira, "hips don't lie," which is already very popular here, was changed to support Cynthia.) Most nights there has been loud reggaeton music all night at parties for candidates, or as I said, modified to support candidates. Starting at midnight Friday, the whole town was also dry for elections. This lasted until midnight Monday.
I honestly don't know all the much about the elections or the candidates, so I don't know what was being voted on, besides president. There were 13 presidential candidates. To win the presidency in this election, a candidate would have had to get 50% of the votes. If not, the top two have a run-off, I think in late November. Obviously with so many candidates, there will be a run-off. The two candidates to the run-off are Noboa and Correa. Correa had a lot of support here on San Cristobal. Cynthia was promising drinkable water to all of the Islands, making her another popular candidate here. I don't know what other positions were being voted on, but last night the 6 party, Cynthia's party, had another parade through town. Around 10:30pm we heard a bunch of honking and yelling. We went outside to see what was going on and they were driving around, waving their flags, and yelling. I'm not sure if Cynthia won the Galapagos or if their party won other seats in the government. I also fell asleep to election music. Correa used to be a professor at USFQ, the university in Quito that GAIAS is based out of.
Since I don't know much, I am putting in link to two articles about the election.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/10/15/ecuador.election.ap/index.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6052370.stm
Posted by Rebecca L Ryan at 07:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)