12-04-2021

monday, april 12, 2021
11
Ecuador to elect new president
in left-right battle
QUITO : Ecuadorans will vote on
Sunday to elect a new president with a
straight choice between socialist
Andres Arauz and conservative
Guillermo Lasso to take over the mantle
of the beleaguered Lenin Moreno.
The next president will begin his term
on May 24 with the country suffering
from an economic crisis badly aggravated
by the coronavirus pandemic.
Opinion polls have the two contenders
neck and neck in a classic left
versus right battle for control of the
country.
Economist Arauz, 36, is a virtual
unknown but topped February's first
round of voting on the back of support
from his mentor and former president
Rafael Correa.
Former banker Lasso, 65, is a seasoned
politician who is hoping it will be
third time lucky in his presidential bid
having twice finished second: to Correa
in 2013 and Moreno in 2017.
Polls open at 7:00 am (1200 GMT)
with voting obligatory for 13.1 million
people in the tiny oil-producing South
American country of 17.4 million.
Whoever wins will have to manage an
economic crisis exasperated by a 7.8
percent contraction in GDP in 2020.
Overall debt is almost $64 billion - 63
percent of GDP - of which $45 billion
(45 percent of GDP) is external debt.
At the same time, there is the pandemic
to manage after more than
340,000 people contracted Covid-19
with over 17,000 of them dying.
Arauz, the candidate from the Union
of Hope coalition, topped the first
round with almost 33 percent of the
vote, some 13 percentage points ahead
of Lasso, from the Creating
Opportunities movement.
Although barely known before he ran
for the top office, Arauz is the protege of
Correa, who would have been his running
mate but for an eight-year conviction
for corruption.
Correa lives in exile in Belgium,
where his wife was born, and he is able
to avoid his prison sentence. But his
influence on Ecuadoran politics
remains strong.
This election is not so much left versus
right, but rather "Correism versus
anti-Correism," political scientist
Esteban Nicholls of Simon Bolivar
University told AFP. The two candidates
can barely be separated in polls.
The last poll by Market predicted a
"technical draw" on Sunday with Arauz
garnering 50 percent and Lasso getting
49 percent.
The election is "totally uncertain,"
Market director Blasco Penaherrera
told AFP.
However, Penaherrera said that former
banker Lasso's "growth" is "vastly
superior" to that of economist Arauz.
Lasso scraped into the runoff by less
than half a percentage point ahead of
indigenous candidate Yaku Perez, who
contested the result and claimed to
have been the victim of fraud.
It took weeks for Lasso's second place
to be confirmed. Ahead of the runoff,
electoral officials have decided to abandon
the usual rapid count to avoid
potentially misleading results.
Socialist Perez, whose Pachakutik
indigenous movement is the secondlargest
bloc in parliament, picked up
around 20 percent of the vote in the
first round.
Pachakutik has refused to back either
candidate in the second round, leaving
uncertainty over which way its supporters
will turn.
The number of undecided voters following
the chaotic first round was
about 35 percent but that's since
shrunk to eight percent.
2 'robbers' killed
in Habiganj
lynch-mob attack
HABIGANJ : Two suspected
robbers were killed in a
lynch-mob attack at Gunipur
in Lakhai upazila of
Habiganj district early
Sunday.
The deceased were
identified as Abdul Hamid,
42, of Dharmandal village of
Brahmanbaria district and
Humayun Mia, 40 of
Madhabpur upazila in the
district.
Mohiuddin Sumon,
officer-in-charge of Lakhai
Police Station, said a group
of robbers numbering 9/10
swooped on the house of one
Jalal Mia around 1:30 am
and kept the house inmates
hostages at gunpoint.
Sensing presence of the
robbers, Jalal informed the
matter to his neighbours
over phone.
Later, local people
encircled the house and
managed to catch two
robbers while the others
managed to flee the scene.
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Deadly storms
hit southern
US coast
HOUSTON : Storms blasting
through the southern
United States have killed at
least two people and injured
others with fierce winds that
toppled trees, smashed
homes and flipped vehicles,
authorities said Saturday.
Millions of people live in
the storms' paths along the
Gulf coast, including
Florida, Mississippi,
Alabama and Louisiana,
where the fatalities were
reported.
One man was killed and at
least seven people were
injured when high winds
struck in the Saint Landry
Parish area, also flipping
some vehicles on a roadway,
local authorities said.
China mulls mixing vaccines
to improve efficacy of jabs
BEIJING : China is considering
the mixing of different
Covid-19 vaccines to
improve the relatively low
efficacy of its existing
options, a top health expert
has told a conference.
Authorities have to "consider
ways to solve the issue
that efficacy rates of existing
vaccines are not high",
Chinese media outlet The
Paper reported, citing Gao
Fu, the head of the Center
for Disease Control and
Prevention.
His comments mark the
first time a top Chinese
expert has publicly alluded
to the relatively low efficacy
of the country's vaccines, as
China forges ahead in its
mass vaccination campaign
and exports its jabs around
the world.
China has administered
around 161 million doses
since vaccinations began last
year - most people will
require two shots - and aims
to fully inoculate 40 percent
of its 1.4 billion population
by June.
But many have been slow
to sign up for jabs, with life
largely back to normal within
China's borders and
domestic outbreaks under
control.
Gao has previously
stressed the best way to prevent
the spread of Covid-19
is vaccination, and said in a
recent state media interview
that China aims to vaccinate
70 percent to 80 percent of
its population between the
end of this year and mid-
2022.
At the conference in
Chengdu on Saturday, Gao
added that an option to
overcome the efficacy problem
is to alternate the use of
vaccine doses that tap different
technologies.
This is an option that
health experts outside China
are studying as well.
Gao said experts should
not ignore mRNA vaccines
just because there are
already several coronavirus
jabs in the country, urging
for further development,
The Paper reported.
Currently, none of China's
jabs conditionally approved
for the market are mRNA
vaccines, but products that
use the technology include
those by US pharma giant
Pfizer and German start-up
BioNTech, as well as by
Moderna.
China has four conditionally
approved vaccines,
whose published efficacy
rates remain behind rival
jabs by Pfizer-BioNTech and
Moderna, which have 95
percent and 94 percent rates
respectively.
China's Sinovac previously
said trials in Brazil
showed around 50 percent
efficacy in preventing infection
and 80 percent efficacy
in preventing cases
requiring medical intervention.
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