Ecuador on 'maximum alert' after govt foils alleged assassination plot against President Daniel Noboa

Ecuador was put on 'maximum alert' on Saturday after an alleged assassination plot against the recently reelected President Daniel Noboa was foiled, the government notified.

A military intelligence report said that assassins are entering Ecuador via Mexico and other countries to carry out "terrorist attacks" against Noboa. The report was leaked on social media earlier this week.

"We strongly condemn and repudiate any intention against the life of the president of the Republic, state authorities or public officials," Ecuador's Ministry of Government said in a statement early Saturday.

"The state is on maximum alert," it added.

Noboa won the race in an April 13 runoff vote, but his main rival Luisa Gonzalez has accused him of committing "grotesque electoral fraud."

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Although it has not named anyone in its report, the government has claimed that the assassination plot was hatched by "criminal structures in complicity with political sectors defeated at the polls."

Ecuador's electoral council and international observers have dismissed claims of fraud in the runoff vote, but Mexico and Colombia have yet to officially recognise Noboa's win.

Who is Daniel Noboa?

Noboa, 37, used to be the owner of an event organising company when he was 18 and then joined his father’s Noboa Corp., where he held management positions in the shipping, logistics and commercial areas. He began his political career in 2021, when he won a seat in the National Assembly and chaired its Economic Development Commission.

What are his plans to fight crime?

Noboa defeated leftist lawyer Luisa González in the October 2023 runoff of a snap election triggered by the decision of then-President Guillermo Lasso to dissolve the National Assembly and shorten his own mandate as a result. Noboa defeated her again in Sunday’s runoff election.

The new term will allow Noboa, 37 and heir to a fortune built on the banana trade, to continue some of his no-holds-barred crimefighting strategies that part of the electorate finds appealing but which have tested the limits of laws and norms of governing.

With inputs from agencies