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💬 Exclusive interview with Rafael Correa
Ecuador’s opposition leader says it was “painful” to see left-wingers Lula and Boric recognizing President Daniel Noboa’s re-election, despite unproven fraud allegations.
Jorge C. Carrasco
May 27, 2025
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Rafael Correa: Lack of regional support was “painful”
Former President Rafael Correa of Ecuador. Photo: Danilo Verpa/Folhapress
Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s former two-term president and the most prominent figure on the country’s left, has lived in exile in Belgium since leaving office in 2017. He faces an eight-year prison sentence for corruption and would be arrested if he returned home. Correa insists his conviction was politically motivated, claiming it was the product of a judiciary swayed by a country that has veered rightward since his election loss.
From abroad, Correa has tried — and failed — to orchestrate a political comeback by proxy. His latest setback on April 13 was particularly painful, when President Daniel Noboa won re-election against Correa’s ally, Luisa González, by a comfortable 56-44 margin, defying polls that had forecast a tight race.
👉 Why it matters. Correa’s team reacted to the defeat by denouncing fraud, pointing to a state of emergency declaration in the build-up to the vote and arguing that authorities handed out unauthorized pens with ink that could be erased by special chemical components after voters filled out their runoff ballots.
That claim was based on a report from Organization of American States (OAS) observers, which stated that a few ballots had ink stains that caused some confusion during the count. But the OAS later stated that in no way could this have explained Noboa’s winning margin, specifying that only a few incidents of this kind took place and that all of them were adequately resolved. Correa’s allegations remain unproven.
In an exclusive interview with The Brazilian Report, the former president remained adamant about his fraud claims and discussed regional allies from Brazil’s Lula to Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, as well as the future of Correísmo without Correa.
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