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| - Guillermo Lasso had a lead of more than nine percentage points over Andres Arauz in Ecuador's general election on Sunday after 51 percent of the votes were counted, the National Electoral Council said. Conservative former banker Lasso had 54.64 percent of the vote compared to socialist economist Arauz's 45.36 percent. "Together we are getting there! THANK YOU ECUADOR for showing your support at the polls," wrote Lasso on Twitter. "As appropriate, we will await the official results. We are feeling positive and have faith." Arauz, the protege of former president Rafael Correa, had earlier claimed victory, citing an exit poll that he said gave him a 1.6 percent advantage. "We have an exit poll and we've won," said Arauz. "Thank you Ecuador! This is a victory for the Ecuadoran people. We ask our delegates to take care of every one of our votes. No-one will prevent the course of history," Arauz added on Twitter. Earlier, television stations Ecuavisa and Teleamazonas published the results of the Cedatos exit poll that gave Lasso almost a 6.5 percentage point lead over Arauz. But the stations also said that the Clima Social pollsters -- the ones cited by Arauz's campaign team in claiming victory -- had indicated the result was a technical draw and thus decided not to publish their figures. Voting is obligatory, and opinion polls had the rivals neck and neck heading into the election for oil-rich Ecuador's 13.1 million registered voters to pick a successor to the deeply unpopular Lenin Moreno. The campaign in the South American country had been dominated by an economic crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Arauz, 36, is virtually unknown but topped February's first round of voting on the back of support from his mentor, Correa, who led the country from 2007-2017. He didn't vote on Sunday because he is still registered in Mexico, where he was studying for a doctorate before deciding to run in the election. Lasso, 65, is a seasoned politician and third-time presidential candidate after having twice finished second: to Correa in 2013 and Lenin Moreno in 2017. Many experts billed the election as a battle of "Correism versus anti-Correism" in a country bitterly divided along political lines. "This social division, that the campaign highlighted, means that the vote to reject Correa effectively goes to Lasso," said Pablo Romero, an analyst at Salesiana University. Correa would have been Arauz's running mate but for an eight-year conviction for corruption. He lives in exile in Belgium, where his wife was born, avoiding his prison sentence. But his influence on Ecuadorian politics remains strong. "If Arauz wins, Correa-style politics will continue. If Lasso wins, we will immediately end all that... which has been a terrible situation for years," Judith Viteri, 41, who works in a chemist's, told AFP after voting. Arauz, the candidate from the Union of Hope coalition, topped the first round with almost 33 percent of the vote, some 13 percentage points ahead of Lasso, from the Creating Opportunities movement. Whoever wins will take over from beleaguered Moreno on May 24 and will immediately face an economic crisis exasperated by a 7.8 percent contraction in GDP in 2020. Overall debt is almost $64 billion -- 63 percent of GDP -- of which $45 billion (45 percent of GDP) is external debt. At the same time, the country has been hard-hit by the pandemic, with hospitals overwhelmed by more than 340,000 coronavirus infections and more than 17,000 deaths. "There's a feeling that to a certain extent, it doesn't matter who wins, we just need an immediate change," said Romero. Should Lasso win, he would face a tough job with Arauz's leftist coalition the largest party in parliament. "There will be permanent tension with the executive. There's almost no chance of the reforms the country needs," said Romero. Lasso scraped into the runoff by less than half a percentage point ahead of indigenous candidate Yaku Perez, who contested the result and claimed to have been the victim of fraud. Socialist Perez, whose Pachakutik indigenous movement is the second-largest bloc in the legislature, picked up more than 19 percent of the vote in the first round. Pachakutik refused to back either candidate in the second round and promoted blank votes. According to a count by AFP, there were 17 percent of invalid votes, amounting to around 925,000 votes. vel-bur/sp/bc/to
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