Ecuador’s National Electoral Council (CNE) partially accepted indigenous leader Yaku Perez’s request to recount the votes in the February 7 election after his elimination from the poll by a minimal difference.
With four votes for and one abstention, the CNE approved a report calling for a recount in 31 polling stations (out of more than 39,000).
The CNE detected 10 electoral lists with numerical inconsistencies and 21 with missing signatures.
Candidate of the Pachakutik, political arm of the indigenous movement, Yaku Perez had presented Tuesday to the CNE a request to verify more than 27,000 electoral lists. He was accompanied by partisans who marched from the town of Loja, on the border with Peru, to the capital Quito.
Of this number, 31 lists will be examined.
“The members of the #CNE have made history not for their attachment to #Democracy, but to powerful economic interests which impose their rules”, reacted on Twitter Yaku Perez, who obtained 19.39% of the vote.
At the end of the April 11 poll, the indigenous leader lacked 32,600 votes to contest the second round against the left-wing economist Andres Arauz, the dolphin of former socialist president Rafael Correa, who had won the first round with 32.72% of the vote.
The former right-wing banker Guillermo Lasso won 19.74% of the vote.
“We are not asking for alms, but for respect for the will of the Ecuadorian people,” added Perez.
The Confederation of Peoples of Kichwa Nationality of Ecuador (Ecuarunari) threatened to paralyze the country and decided to declare “a general strike”.