Ecuador’s opposition crushed amid torture allegations and activist deaths

By Pilar Troya Fernández 
President Daniel Noboa governs Ecuador with increasingly authoritarian methods. Elected in 2023 and re-elected in 2025, he has concentrated power in the executive branch, clashed with the Constitutional Court, abused states of emergency, and turned the justice system into a weapon against his adversaries. Analysts and human rights organizations describe a drift toward dictatorship: a leader who maintains the forms of democracy while eroding its substance. The lead-up to the local government elections of November 29, 2026, offers the clearest example of this strategy, aimed at winning by preventing the opposition from fielding candidates.
One Move in Two Steps
The maneuver combines two elements that can only be understood together. The first: on March 6, 2026, following a complaint from the Public Prosecutor's Office, a judge of the Electoral Disputes Tribunal (TCE) suspended the Citizen Revolution (RC), the largest opposition party and movement of former president Rafael Correa, for nine months. The measure was ratified weeks later and, in July, upheld by the Constitutional Court.
At the same time, Unidad Popular, a left-wing party, and Construye, a right-wing movement whose presidential candidate was Fernando Villavicencio, who was assassinated in 2023, were removed from the registry of political organizations by the National Electoral Council (CNE) on the grounds that they did not meet the minimum number of members required by law. Construye's appeal was denied, and the party denounced what it called "judicial persecution of critics and opponents" and labeled the decision a democratic fraud. Unidad Popular managed to prove that the CNE acted outside the legal time limit (23 days late) and that the cancellation lacked sufficient justification regarding the actual number of members.
The second piece is the calendar. In March, the National Electoral Council (CNE) moved up the local government elections scheduled for February 2027 to November 29, 2026, citing the risk of rain from El Niño; neither the 1998 El Niño nor the pandemic had previously justified such an advance. The effect of fitting both pieces together is precise: the new candidate registration period – from August 2 to 17, 2026 – falls within the nine months during which the opposition is suspended. Moving the elections forward to coincide with the suspension prevents the government's main rival (RC) from fielding lists under its own party name.
Alternative Party Shortlived 
Faced with the blockade, the Correa movement sought a legal solution: registering its candidates under the allied Amigo movement. This alternative was short-lived. On July 16, the Attorney General's Office informed the Constitutional Court (TCE) of an investigation into alleged money laundering against the movement; the following day, the Court also suspended it for nine months, and the National Electoral Council (CNE) implemented the measure immediately, just two weeks before the registration deadline.
The Executive's conduct fuels suspicions. On July 23, Noboa stated that pre-candidates could register with “any other party that has not been involved in money laundering,” mentioning the Socialist Party in the same breath, thus presenting as a fait accompli an alleged crime that is still under investigation. His Secretary of Public Administration, José Julio Neira, former director of the state unit that handles classified financial information, publicly detailed the origin of the suspicions. Legal expert Mauricio Alarcón warned that the alarming aspect is not the investigation itself, but rather that the government appears to have access to classified files “that are not even in the hands of the affected parties,” and questioned “the selectivity” and its timing with the electoral calendar. If the RC candidates register with the Socialist Party, it would not be surprising if the party were also canceled or suspended.
Torture, Disappearances and Dead Activists
All of this unfolds against a sinister backdrop. In June 2026, Ecuador entered the World Organisation Against Torture's Global Torture Index for the first time, in the "high risk" category: the organization documented 369 reports of torture and at least 51 enforced disappearances attributed to state agents between 2024 and 2026, within the context of the "internal armed conflict" declared by the government, which has decreed 21 states of emergency, 9 curfews, and 272 days of restricted movement with almost no reduction in crime and an increase in internal displacement due to threats, extortion, and pressure from criminal groups.
Two deaths occurred within this climate. Robinson del Pezo, who covered land conflicts in the province of Santa Elena, was murdered in November 2025. Anti-corruption activist Mónica Silva, of Polish origin and a resident of the country for over a decade, who had demanded justice for this crime and denounced threats against her life, was found dead on June 8, 2026. The Minister of the Interior suggested suicide, but the autopsy revealed a blow to the head and strangulation. Silva was investigating alleged cocaine shipments hidden in banana containers belonging to a company linked to the president's family, as well as a land trafficking network. The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of human rights defenders called on Ecuador to "cease the persecution" and protect activists.
Corruption Within
The official narrative presents the cases against the opposition as an anti-corruption crusade. However, the biggest scandal of the period implicates the Executive branch itself: in the Progen case, the State Comptroller General estimated the losses to the State at approximately $104 million due to emergency thermal power generation contracts signed in 2024 with that US company, whose equipment never became operational. There are also the eight shipments of cocaine found in the Noboa family's banana exports.
The result is an election where the contenders are decided in the courts before they are decided at the ballot box. The government insists that these are cases unrelated to the Executive branch; the opposition and part of the legal community counter that the selective nature of the proceedings and their timely timing point in another direction.
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This article was produced by Globetrotter. Pilar Troya Fernández is Ecuadorian, an anthropologist with a master's degree in gender studies, and a researcher at the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. She has served as an advisor to the National Planning Secretariat, an advisor to the National Secretariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, and as Undersecretary General of Higher Education in Ecuador. She currently resides in Brazil