Former coup leader wins runoff election for Ecuador presidency

QUITO, Ecuador -- A former coup leader viewed as a crusader against corruption won Ecuador's presidential runoff Sunday, defeating a billionaire businessman who socializes with America's rich and powerful.

With 97 percent of the votes counted, Lucio Gutierrez, a cashiered army colonel, had 54.3 percent of the votes compared with 45.7 percent for Alvaro Noboa, who heads a banana and shipping empire that includes 110 companies.

The 45-year-old president-elect, who led a 2000 coup that toppled a highly unpopular president seen as corrupt, campaigned as an anti-corruption crusader. That appealed strongly to voters fed up with leaders who plunder government coffers.

In a television interview Sunday night, Gutierrez sought to reassure Ecuadorean and international financial circles that his election was not a threat in any way to investors.

Since the first round of elections in October, Gutierrez has moderated his nationalistic rhetoric, even traveling to New York to woo Wall Street investors.

"I want to give the greatest of assurances to the national productive sector, the national financial sector and the international financial sector," he said.

He said Ecuadoreans would find him to be "very tolerant and respectful of human rights, the right to private property ... health and education."

From early in the day, voters throughout the Andean nation -- highland Indians in traditional ponchos and fedora hats, coastal fishermen, urban shantytown dwellers -- tried to decide which of the two populists might keep his word to improve their lives. At least 25 percent of Ecuador's 8.1 million voters were undecided Saturday, according to polls.

Noboa, 52, who counts among his friends several members of the Kennedy clan and Hollywood actor Charlton Heston, said his election would attract millions of dollars in foreign investment from his international financial contacts, creating jobs for Ecuador.

Ecuador's two-decade-old democracy has suffered trying times in recent years. Since 1996, the nation has had five presidents.

Two of them were driven from office in the midst of political and economic upheaval.Gutierrez earned his reputation as a corruption fighter when he led a group of disgruntled junior army officers and 5,000 Indian protesters in a coup in January 2000 that ousted President Jamil Mahuad in the midst of Ecuador's worst economic crisis in decades.

Gutierrez was expelled from the army for his rebellion and spent six months in a military prison.

He had maintained a wide margin over Noboa since the first round of voting Oct. 24, in which they left nine other candidates by the wayside. But in the last week, Noboa closed in on him with an aggressive media campaign in which he accused Gutierrez of being a wife beater, a communist and likely to assume dictatorial powers if elected.

"Col. Gutierrez doesn't have an economic plan," Noboa said in one televised ad. "So when the people demand jobs, houses, unemployment bonuses, he'll turn into a dictator and give them bullets, bullets and more bullets."

Gutierrez has denied the accusations, calling Noboa "a little liar."

"I'm an ex-military man without any doctrinaire leftist formation," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "As an ex-military man, I have a philosophy of service to the poor, to the neediest."

As has happened often in Ecuadorean elections, voting appeared to be breaking down along regional lines, with voters on the hot, tropical coast casting their ballots for Noboa and people in the cool Andean highlands, including large Indian populations, backing Gutierrez, who is of mixed race.

"I voted for Lucio because he is going to get rid of corruption and I think he is going to help the poor, those who have nothing," said Maria Alban, a 35-year-old street vendor, after casting her ballot at a school in Quito. "I just hope he is not like the other politicians who offer everything and don't keep any promise."

In Guayaquil, a riverport that is the country's largest city as well as Noboa's stronghold, Abel Soto, a 32-year-old economist, voted for Noboa because "Lucio Gutierrez is a colonel who carried out a coup. I don't think it's right that he should be president. He can't be trusted."

Ecuador's two-decade-old democracy has suffered through trying times in recent years. Since 1996, this small nation of 12 million people has had five presidents. Two of them were driven from office in the midst of political and economic upheaval.

Officials decided the city, which has 100,000 registered voters, needed time to recover from the explosion Wednesday of an army ammunition depot that killed seven people, injured hundreds and destroyed seven blocks of homes.

Ecuador's two-decade-old democracy has suffered through trying times in recent years. Since 1996 this small nation of 12 million people has had five presidents. Two of them were driven from office in the midst of political and economic upheaval.