Noboa attends Pope’s funeral at start of international tour; Correistas claim ‘walking ink’ was part of election fraud; Heavy rain floods parts of Cuenca, other cities

President Daniel Noboa attended the funeral of Pope Francis Saturday morning in Vatican City, joining more than 100 heads of state in Saint Peter’s Square. In greetings before the service, Noboa met with current and former U.S. presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and King Felipe of Spain.

Following post-funeral events in Italy Saturday and Sunday, Noboa will lead an Ecuadorian delegation on visits to several European, Middle Eastern and Asian countries for discussions on trade and other issues,

President Daniel Noboa (front row, at right) attended the funeral of Pope Francis Saturday in Vatican City.

On Friday, Noboa met with Ecuador’s Ambassador to Italy before visiting the coffin of Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Correistas claim ‘walking ink’ was part of election fraud
Following the rejection of its voting tally sheet challenge by the National Electoral Council (CNE), Citizens Revolution is claiming that “transferrable ink” was used on ballots to swing the election to President Daniel Noboa.

Representatives of the Luisa González campaign have labelled the issue “inkswap” while CNE President Diana Atamaint is calling it “the case of the walking ink.”

Citizens Revolution claims that damp ink on ballots was used to transfer votes for González to Noboa when ballots were folded. “Following review by legal and technical experts, we believe election fraud was carried out with the use of transferrable ink that negated votes for Luisa,” Citizens Revolution said in statement.

The claim continued: “Our central hypothesis is that a mechanism of the physical transfer of ink between voting options was used when folding the ballot, generating marks in Daniel Noboa’s box when the voter had marked for Luisa González.”

The new fraud charge, according to Citizens Revolution, is based on a comment by European Union election observers that the ink used to mark ballots “offset” in some cases. The observers recommended that CNE use another kind of ink in future elections.

On Friday, head of the EU observer team Gabriel Mato said the comment about ink was not an indication of fraud. “We simply observed that in some cases the ink used to mark ballots was smeared,” he told a reporter from El Universo. “I doubt this affected the vote count and if there were cases where it did, it would have affected both candidates. As we said in our report, we found no evidence of fraud in the election.”

Heavy rain floods parts of Cuenca
Flooding was reported in several areas of Cuenca Friday afternoon, with some of the worst in the historic district. The intense afternoon storm triggered a landslide on Av. Las Americas and temporarily stalled the tram near the 9 de Octubre market.

Flooding stopped traffic on Calles Simon Bolivar, Mariscal Sucre and Av. González Suarez, and flooded the ground floor of the 10 de Noviembre market on Calle Larga. According to the mayor’s office, city crews cleared storm drains in more than 20 locations as a result of the rain.

Guayaquil and Quito also experienced flooding and landslides Friday as strong storms continue to move across the intermountain valley and the coastal region. The weather forecast is for more heavy rain through Monday.