Guillermo Lasso, a rich ex-banker, is Ecuador's new president

UNTIL 4AM the cars of revellers snaked through Quito’s Avenida de los Shyris, honking in celebration at the record-breaking win of Guillermo Lasso, a 65-year-old former banker who will soon be Ecuador’s new president. Not since the return of civilian rule in 1979 has a candidate managed to overcome a double-digit first-round deficit to win a run-off. Latin American presidents rang to congratulate him even before his victory speech in his home town of Guayaquil, as his win became more and more clear. With more than 98% of the vote counted, Mr Lasso has 52.5% to his leftwing rival Andrés Arauz’s 47.5%. “I will dedicate myself to the construction of a national project” of unity, he said in his victory speech. Rather than continue peddling the fraud allegations he made earlier in the day, Mr Arauz conceded.

It was a fitting end to a campaign full of surprises. Mr Lasso’s chances, as a conservative Catholic, initially seemed slim. Mr Arauz had a formidable campaign machine, one that catapulted him from obscurity to presidential favourite in less than a year. In the first round on February 7th, Mr Arauz, an economist who served under Rafael Correa, a populist leftist who governed Ecuador for a decade until 2017, won 32.7% of the vote. Mr Lasso barely scraped into the run-off with less than 20%, edging out the indigenous party candidate, Yaku Pérez, by only 30,000 votes. A...