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Ecuadoreans voted on Sunday to give their new president more powers to combat the country\u2019s plague of drug-related gang violence, officials said, supporting his hard-line stance on security and offering an early glimpse of how he might fare in his bid for re-election next year.<\/p>\n
President Daniel Noboa, the 36-year-old heir to a banana empire, took office in November<\/a> after an election season focused on the violence<\/a>, which has surged to levels not seen in decades. In January, he declared an \u201cinternal armed conflict<\/a>\u201d and ordered the military to \u201cneutralize\u201d the country\u2019s gangs. The move allowed soldiers to patrol the streets and Ecuador\u2019s prisons, many of which have come under gang control<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a referendum on Sunday, Ecuadoreans voted to enshrine the increased military presence into law and to lengthen prison sentences for certain offenses linked to organized crime, among other security measures. With about 20 percent of the votes counted on Sunday night, Ecuador\u2019s electoral authority declared that the trend toward approval of the security measures was \u201cirreversible,\u201d though voters rejected other proposals on the ballot.<\/p>\n Mr. Noboa claimed victory on social media. \u201cI apologize for jumping the gun on a triumph that I cannot help but celebrate,\u201d he wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A flood of violence from international criminal groups and local gangs has turned Ecuador, a country of 17 million, into a key player in the global drug trade. Tens of thousands of Ecuadoreans have fled to the U.S.-Mexico border.<\/p>\n Experts saw the results of the voting Sunday as an indicator of how strongly the public supported Mr. Noboa\u2019s stance on crime. \u201cWhat is clear is that the people are saying \u2018yes\u2019 to the security model,\u201d said an Ecuadorean political analyst, Caroline \u00c1vila. She said the voters also had \u201chigh expectations\u201d that the crime problem \u201cwill be solved.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Noboa, who is expected to seek a second term in February, has high approval ratings<\/a>, though they have slipped lately. He became president after his predecessor, Guillermo Lasso, facing impeachment proceedings<\/a> over embezzlement accusations, called for early elections; Mr. Noboa is in office until May 2025, the remainder of Mr. Lasso\u2019s term.<\/p>\n Some human rights groups have criticized Mr. Noboa\u2019s anticrime tactics as going too far, saying they have led to abuses in prisons and in the streets. Still, most Ecuadoreans seem willing to accept Mr. Noboa\u2019s strategy if they think it makes them safer, analysts said.<\/p>\n \u201cNoboa is now one of the most popular presidents in the region,\u201d said Glaeldys Gonz\u00e1lez, who researches Ecuador for the International Crisis Group. \u201cHe is taking advantage of those levels of popularity that he currently has to catapult himself to the presidential elections.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Noboa\u2019s deployment of the military was followed by a decline in violence and a precarious sense of safety, but the stability did not last. Over the Easter holiday this month, there were 137 murders in Ecuador, and kidnappings and extortion have been increasing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Two weeks ago, Mr. Noboa took the extraordinary step of arresting an Ecuadorean politician<\/a> who had taken refuge at the Mexican Embassy in Quito, in what experts called a violation of an international treaty on the sanctity of diplomatic posts. The move, which drew condemnation across the region, sent a message in line with Mr. Noboa\u2019s heavy-handed approach to violence and graft.<\/p>\n Mr. Noboa said he had sent police officers into the embassy to arrest Jorge Glas<\/a>, a former vice president who had been convicted of corruption, because Mexico had abused the immunities and privileges granted to the diplomatic mission. Mr. Noboa said Mr. Glas was not entitled to protection because he was a convicted criminal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n