Elections results

What to expect from Ecuador’s new president

IT WAS hardly a ringing endorsement. With nearly all the votes counted, Lenín Moreno, the political heir of Ecuador’s left-wing president, Rafael Correa, won the presidential election by barely more than two percentage points. That victory brings to an end a series of defeats for left-wing governments in Latin America. Mr Moreno will try to continue Mr Correa’s free-spending populism, but he will have less money and will exercise less power than his predecessor did during more than a decade in office.

Mr Moreno’s narrow victory on April 2nd came after an ugly fight with Guillermo Lasso, a conservative former banker. Mr Moreno’s party, Alianza PAIS, unjustly attacked his rival as one of the authors of Ecuador’s financial crisis in 1999-2000. (Mr Lasso was briefly finance and economy minister at the time, but quit because he opposed Ecuador’s decision to default on its bonds.) Mr Lasso’s connection to Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic organisation, probably counted against him.