What to know about Ecuador's reelected President Noboa and his plans to fight crime

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Daniel Noboa stunned voters in 2023 when he won a snap election for a 16-month presidency after only a brief stint as a lawmaker and with no established political machinery.

No longer a political neophyte, the conservative millionaire defeated the protegee of Ecuador’s most influential recent president for a second time and earned four years in office with Sunday's election victory.

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.

“A huge hug to all the Ecuadorians who always believed in this young president,” he told supporters after the National Electoral Council said results showed an “irreversible trend” in his favor. “Ecuador wants to be different... it wants to move forward.”

Noboa opened an event organizing 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.

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.

Figures released by Ecuador’s National Electoral Council showed Noboa receiving 55.8% of the vote with more than 92% of ballots counted, while González earned 44%. However, González, the mentee of former President Rafael Correa, vowed to seek a recount over what she described as “grotesque” electoral fraud.

Under Noboa's watch, the homicide rate dropped from 46.18 per 100,000 people in 2023, to 38.76 per 100,000 people in 2024. But despite the decrease, the rate remained far higher than the 6.85 homicides per 100,000 people seen in 2019.

During his brief first term, Noboa has sought to establish a friendly relationship with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Grace Jaramillo, an Andean region expert and professor at the University of British Columbia, said these efforts played a role in some voters’ decisions.

“The majority of Ecuadorians have migrant relatives and know well that a scenario with González, a leftist, would be terrible for deportations,” Jaramillo said. “t’s an issue that touches every middle- and working-class home... Showing closeness to Trump was crucial for many families.”

Noboa's crime-fighting strategies have been questioned inside and outside the South American country.

Ecuador has been under a state of internal armed conflict since he declared it in January 2024 in order to mobilize the military in certain places, including prisons, where organized crime has taken hold. To the shock and bewilderment of world leaders, Noboa also authorized last year’s police raid on Mexico’s embassy in the capital, Quito, to arrest former Vice President Jorge Glas, a convicted criminal and fugitive who had been living there for months.

Further, he entrusted presidential powers while campaigning earlier this year to a government official, unelected Vice President Verónica Abad, as required by the Ecuadorian Code of Democracy.

Ahead of February's first-round election, Quito's University of the Americas professor Maria Cristina Bayas said Noboa “has not hesitated to use the law and the Constitution to keep things working the way he wants” and may continue to do so if reelected.

Noboa and Abad began feuding before taking office. The origins of the dispute are unknown, but shortly after becoming president, Noboa dispatched Abad to serve as ambassador to Israel, effectively isolating her from his administration. She has described her monthslong posting as “forced exile.”

Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.

Supporters of President Daniel Noboa celebrate early returns showing him in the lead in the presidential election runoff in Quito, Ecuador, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Carlos Noriega)

Incumbent President Daniel Noboa shows his ballot casts before voting, accompanied by his children, in the presidential election runoff in Olon, Ecuador, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP Photo)

Incumbent presidential candidate Daniel Noboa casts his vote, accompanied by his children, in the election runoff in Olon, Ecuador, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP Photo)

Supporters of President Daniel Noboa celebrate early returns showing him in the lead in the presidential election runoff in Quito, Ecuador, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Carlos Noriega)

Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa arrives with his wife Lavinia Valbonesi to address supporters after early returns show him in the lead in the presidential election runoff at his family home in Olon, Ecuador, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa addresses supporters after early returns show him in the lead in the presidential election runoff at his family home in Olon, Ecuador, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Incumbent presidential candidate Daniel Noboa holds his children's hands after voting in the election runoff in Olon, Ecuador, Sunday, April 13, 2025. (AP Photo)

NEW YORK (AP) — New York is celebrating the Knicks in classic style Thursday, throwing a ticker-tape parade for the team that brought home the NBA championship longed for by generations of fans.

The Knicks' victory — after a 53-year drought - has electrified New Yorkers, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani has predicted that Thursday’s parade might be one of the biggest in the city's history.

The mere fact that it's happening is historic in itself. Although the Knicks won the championship twice in the 1970s, the city didn't host a parade for them either time. Then-Mayor John Lindsay had cut down on ticker-tape extravaganzas for financial and other reasons, and he instead honored the Knicks at a 1970 reception at the mayoral mansion and a jampacked 1973 ceremony outside City Hall.

This time, the city is going all out.

“There will be performances, there will be New Yorkers, there will be the team and there will be history,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday.

The parade is set to start at 10 a.m. Thursday near Battery Park and head up Broadway on the skyscraper-flanked route dubbed the "Canyon of Heroes.” The procession is to end at City Hall, where the players are to get another traditional tribute: keys to the city.

Knicks legends Walt “Clyde” Frazier — a member of the ’70s champion teams — and Patrick Ewing are expected to participate in the parade, according to a person familiar with the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the details before they were publicly announced. The person said Mike Breen, the Knicks’ play-by-play announcer on MSG Network, was set to emcee the City Hall ceremony.

Alicia Keys, the singer who collaborated with Jay-Z on the New York-loving 2009 hit “Empire State of Mind,” has been tapped to perform.

“How could I not?” Keys said Wednesday in a social media video that featured her on the phone with Knicks forward OG Anunoby.

Police plan to deploy 10,000 officers to secure the event, which follows ebullient but sometimes chaotic street celebrations and some violence during the Knicks' run to victory over the San Antonio Spurs.

“We want people to enjoy this moment,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a planning meeting Wednesday, “but public safety comes first.”

Some 650 sanitation workers have been assigned to clean up what could be tens of thousands of pounds (kilograms) of debris, if recent history is any guide.

Ticker-tape parades derive their name from the narrow strips of paper used by telegraph-era “stock ticker” machines. New York brokerage firm workers took to tossing the paper out their office windows during parades in the late 19th century, adding a swirling aerial spectacle to the festivities.

Over the years, especially up to the mid-1960s, the city rolled out ticker-tape parades to honor visiting foreign leaders, mark historic anniversaries and hail feats in aviation, war, sports, music, space travel and more.

The Knicks' parade will be the 210th, and it comes after a ticker-tape bash for the WNBA's New York Liberty in 2024.

AP Basketball Writer Brian Mahoney contributed from Southampton, New York.

A street sign reading "Champions Way" is posted along Broadway known as the "Canyon of Heroes", ahead of the New York Knicks' ticker-tape parade, Wednesday, June 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

A street sign reading "Champions Way" is posted along Broadway known as the "Canyon of Heroes", ahead of the New York Knicks' ticker-tape parade, Wednesday, June 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Banners hang above City Hall as preparations take place, Wednesday, June 17, 2026, in New York, ahead of the New York Knicks' NBA championship ticker-tape parade. (AP Photo/Alyssa Goodman)

FILE - New York Mayor John Lindsay, right, congratulates Red Holzman, coach of the New York Knicks, after presenting the city's diamond jubilee medals to Holzman and other members of the Knicks team on the steps of City Hall on May 15, 1973. Shown with the mayor are Irving Felt, board chairman of Madison Square Garden, second from left, and Willis Reed, team captain, next to Lindsay. (AP Photo/Anthony Camerano, File)

The New York Knicks celebrate with the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy after defeating the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 of the NBA Finals basketball series, Saturday, June 13, 2026, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Darren Abate)