Ecuador’s municipal elections on 23 February did not go anything like according to plan for President Rafael Correa. He invested considerable time and energy in campaigning, unsuccessfully, to displace the long-serving opposition mayor of the coastal city of Guayaquil, Jaime Nebot. So much so that he possibly neglected other areas of the country, and was caught out by the speed of the rise of the opposition in Quito, where the incumbent mayor, Augusto Barrera, of Correa’s Alianza País (AP), contrived to lose a 20-percentage point lead in opinion polls carried out as recently as mid-January to end up more than 20 points adrift of his main rival Mauricio Rodas. To top it all off, the AP also lost Cuenca, Ecuador’s third largest city, to a leftist coalition.End of preview - This article contains approximately 1471 words.
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