Quito
Daniel Noboa (pictured), the 35-year-old heir to a banana fortune, will become Ecuador’s youngest-ever president after winning Sunday’s election run-off by a margin of roughly five points over his left-wing rival, Luisa Gonzalez, says Vanessa Buschschlüter on BBC News. Noboa, who has promised to focus on soaring violent crime, youth employment and foreign investment, will face an “uphill struggle” during his limited time in office. Firstly, he has “limited political experience”. Secondly, he doesn’t have much time. Although presidential terms are usually four years, this was an early election “triggered by the dissolution of parliament” by the outgoing president Guillermo Lasso, and Noboa will be serving out Lasso’s term, which ends in May 2025. He will then have to stand for a second term. Noboa has vowed to tackle the country’s powerful gangs, which often operate from inside jails, by housing the “most hardened criminals” on ships. He also plans to tighten border and port security to disrupt key drug-trafficking routes. Ecuador’s murder rate quadrupled between 2018 and 2022. To “lift the economy from
