Do we like Daniel Noboa?
Our score: 4 out of 10. A hardline record on rights and protest and a thin showing on LGBTQ+ issues, with some real security and economic numbers on the other side.
Daniel Noboa was born in 1987, the eldest of four in a banana-and-politics dynasty. His father Álvaro Noboa is a billionaire banana baron who ran for president five times and lost. Daniel studied business at NYU Stern, started an events company at 18, then worked in the family firm. He sat in the National Assembly from 2021 and ran in 2023 as an outsider, winning at 35.
His brand is the crackdown. He declared an internal armed conflict against gangs and kept renewing states of emergency. Amnesty International raised concerns about mass arrests with little evidence of due process, torture in prisons, and extrajudicial executions allegedly committed by the armed forces. Human Rights Watch said his security response has failed to curb violence, with the Interior Ministry showing homicides up about 40 percent through September 2025.
The mood got uglier in 2025. After he ended the diesel subsidy, Indigenous-led protests ran nearly three weeks. One protester was killed, more than 100 were arrested and up to 5,000 troops were sent to Quito. Noboa rejected dialogue, saying “Those who act like criminals will be treated like criminals.” CONAIE says its protests were peaceful. The government called rocks thrown at his motorcade an assassination attempt, which CONAIE denies. The Attorney General's Office is investigating the death.
On the harm check, Human Rights Watch reports that officials called Constitutional Court judges “enemies of the people”, and that bank accounts of environmental and Indigenous groups and leaders were frozen. On LGBTQ+ issues, PBS reports he pledged to defend the traditional family as a candidate, and that his administration has shown little support for LGBTQ+ rights. An LGBTQ+ advocate there said what worries them is his ministers. We found no slurs and no culture-war campaign from him personally. That is the whole list.
Nothing brand new that we could pin down lately, but 2026 has still been messy. In November 2025 voters rejected all his referendum questions, including foreign military bases, and he said he respected the vote. In April 2026 he told a Colombian paper that Petro met opposition figures, some with alleged ties to a gang boss, and Petro said he would file a criminal slander case.
The good stuff is thin and mostly about numbers. Fact-checkers found his May 2026 state-of-the-nation speech leaned on selective figures, and a poverty claim couldn't be supported. But Lupa Media found the fall in homicides is real, though overstated, and both outlets said non-oil exports and foreign investment growth had official backing. Credit where it's due, though we found no big charity or personal kindness story.