"The democratic elections of President Rafael Correa in Ecuador have enraged the oligarchs, particularly the wealthiest bankers who ruled... the nation for so many decades. That... led to a massive banking crisis led by fraudulent elite bankers... Ecuador suffered the highest percentage of emigration in Latin America. Political crises became the norm, with a series of presidents forced to resign within months. Correa and his reform party, Alianza PAIS (AP), changed all this. Correa has served his full elected terms of office largely because he met his campaign promises to more than double expenditures on education, health, and infrastructure that have transformed Ecuador and substantially reduced poverty, unemployment, and inequality. Ecuador’s democracy is real. Ecuador has several major political parties and employs a common democratic means of determining whether the first round of the election results produce such a dominant winner that no run-off election is required. Despite the fact that Mr. Moreno, the AP candidate for the presidency, came within a razor-thin margin of reaching that decisive plurality in the first round, the government required a run-off election in accordance with the law. The AP’s reforms were so successful that immigration to Ecuador exceeded emigration from Ecuador. The AP reformed banking to reduce the frauds by elite bankers that drove Ecuador’s financial crisis. The oligarchs and bankers have been weakening the Ecuadorian economy by moving their wealth to offshore tax havens. The AP has adopted legislation to limit such tax evasion."