Daniel Noboa, the Ecuadorian president, impels the vote of the population to the reforms that will mark the direction of his Administration. The popular consultation has been criticized by social movements, students, labor unions and other leftist political forces.
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The 11 questions planned will focus on issues such as how to combat organised crime, attract investment and create jobs, and take place less than a year after the general elections and in the midst of a serious energy crisis, with blackouts of up to eight hours a day and another diplomatic crisis.
Questions of the referendum passed control of the Constitutional Court on January 26, 2024, while the referendum questions bypassed that filter on February 5. With Executive Decrees No. 162 and 163, on February 9, 2024, Noboa officially called for popular consultation and a referendum, respectively.
If Noboa wins the referendum, the president will gain momentum with the intention of running for re-election in the 2025 elections, but having a negative result will lose strength and will have more complicated repeat electoral victory.
The popularity levels of the Ecuadorian president has been affected by a new escalation of violence by criminal gangs, which in recent years have led to Ecuador being one of the countries with the most homicides per capita in Latin America, with 45 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023 and the violent incurssion in the Mexican Embassy.
The Ecuadorian political movement Citizen Revolution (Revolución Ciudadana), the main opposition force, affirmed that the popular consultation proposed by President Daniel Noboa does not solve anything regarding the urgent problems of that country, At the same time, he stressed that the popular consultation mechanism should not be used "irresponsibly", nor as "a poll of a nascent presidential discharge."