Lenín Voltaire Moreno Garcés (; born 19 March 1953) is an Ecuadorian politician who was the 46th president of Ecuador from 2017 to 2021. He was also vice president from 2007 to 2013, under President Rafael Correa.
He was nominated as the candidate for Correa's PAIS Alliance, a social democratic political party, in the 2017 presidential election and won a narrow victory in Ecuador's second round of voting on 2 April 2017. However, after his election Moreno drastically shifted his political stance, distancing himself from Correa's leftist legacy in both domestic and foreign policy.
After completing a presidential term marked by corruption, violence, and the implementation of a series of neoliberal reforms in his country, Lenín Moreno became extremely unpopular among the Ecuadorian people. By the end of Moreno's presidency he had left office with an approval rating of 9%, the lowest in modern Ecuadorian history, due to his poor administration, lack of achievements, and continuous corruption scandals. He was expelled from PAIS Alliance in March 2021 after the party's crushing defeat in the 2021 elections.
In August 2026, he was sentenced to five years in prison for bribery by the National Court of Justice in the Sinohydro Case. The former president had received bribes to facilitate financing for the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric project. The Court also ordered his “permanent disqualification from holding public office.” He is the first former president of Ecuador to be convicted of bribery.
Moreno was shot in a 1998 robbery attempt and thereafter has used a wheelchair. For his advocacy for people with disabilities, he was nominated for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. According to The New York Times, while he was in office from 2017 to 2021, Moreno was the world's only serving head of state to use a wheelchair.
Early life and education Lenín Moreno was born into a middle-class family in Nuevo Rocafuerte, a small town in the Ecuadorian Amazon, near the Peruvian border. His father, Servio Tulio Moreno, was a teacher who promoted bilingual education and integrated schools for indigenous children and mestizo children and who later became a senator. His parents named him after men they admired; his father liked Vladimir Lenin and his mother Voltaire, although an error in the civil registration turned his middle name into Boltaire (in Spanish the letters v and b correspond to the same phoneme). He moved to Quito with his family when he was three years old.
Moreno studied in Quito at the Instituto Nacional Mejía (Mejia National Institute), the Colegio Nacional Sebastián Benalcázar (Sebastian Benalcazar National School), and the Universidad Central del Ecuador (Central University of Ecuador), where he earned a degree in Public Administration and was honored as the best graduate. He studied psychology.
Career Moreno began his career in 1976 as the director of the Continental Professional Training Center. He went on to become Director of OMC Publigerencia Andina, sales manager of Satho and marketing manager of Zitro, all located in Ecuador. Then he moved to the public sector, taking an administrative post with the Minister of Government. He worked extensively in the public tourism industry. He founded the Chamber of Tourism of Pichincha, a province in Ecuador, and was executive director of the National Federation of Tourism Chambers and executive director of the Chamber of Tourism of Pichincha, between 1997 and 1999.
Moreno was appointed Special Envoy on Disability and Accessibility by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in December 2013.
Vice-presidency (2007–2013) Moreno boosted disabled services budget, aiding Ecuadorians with housing and income. Moreno implementing a 4% employment quota. He founded the Manuela Espejo Solidarity Mission, aiding and expanding beyond Ecuador. The mission involved Ecuadorean and Cuban doctors visiting homes, offering free medical checkups. Completing his term in 2013, Moreno was the first VP to do so since 1992.
Moreno left the vice presidency on 24 May 2013 and was succeeded by Jorge Glas.
Presidency (2017–2021)
On 1 October 2016, Moreno was nominated as a candidate for the 2017 presidential election at the conference of Alianza País. The statement of his candidacy was made by President Rafael Correa.
On 19 February 2017 election, Moreno won the elections with 39.3% of the vote. However he was short by less than one percentage point of outright victory, as Ecuador requires in its two-round system.In the Ecuadorian system, to avoid a runoff a candidate needs either to win 50 percent of the first-round vote or to take 40 percent of the vote and be at least 10 percent ahead of the runner-up. (Guillermo Lasso had obtained 28.09%, so had Moreno gained 40 percent, then he would have won by the 40-10 rule.) On 2 April 2017 runoff, he defeated Guillermo Lasso, with 51.16% of the vote.
Presidency Within months of winning the election, Moreno started moving away from his election platform, thus igniting a feud with ex-president Rafael Correa. Later in 2018, through a referendum, Moreno reversed several key pieces of legislation passed by the Correa administration that targeted wealthy individuals and banks. He also reversed a previous referendum allowing indefinite re-election, and established the (CPCCS-T), which has supra-constitutional powers, to "evaluate control authorities and judges", with the aim of removing what remains of Correa's influence.
Since the creation of CPCCS-T, Moreno has used it to oust and replace government officials, provincial judges, the judicial council, and the National Electoral Council (CNE).
Moreno's government adopted a conservative policy: reduction of public spending, trade liberalization, and flexibility of the labour code. The Productive Development Act enshrines an austerity policy, and reduces the development and redistribution policies of the previous mandate. In the area of taxes, the authorities aim to "encourage the return of investors" by granting tax amnesty and proposing measures to reduce tax rates for large companies. In addition, the government waives the right to tax increases in raw material prices and foreign exchange repatriations.
Moreno's government supported plans for oil drilling in Ecuador's Amazon region.
The Ecuadorian state limits annual public expenditure increases to 3%, confines budget deficits to debt interest repayment, and promotes privatizations with extended subsidies. Additionally, the government adopts international arbitration for foreign investments.
Moreno announced in February 2019 that he had obtained a loan of more than $10 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, with which the previous government had broken off, "at rates below 5% on average and for terms of up to 30 years".
In June 2019, Moreno's government faced protests from environmentalist, indigenous and self-described patriotic groups after he permitted the US military to use the airbase on Galápagos Islands.
He faced more protests in September 2019, as pro-choice demonstrators protested the fact that Ecuador had failed to pass proposed legislation, which would have relaxed the nation's strict abortion laws to allow for abortion in the case of rape.
On 2 October 2019, Moreno declared the abolition of fuel subsidies, which in turn triggered the 2019 Ecuadorian protests. The government was forced to move from Quito to Guayaquil after effectively losing control of the capital to demonstrators. Seven people were killed and 2,100 were arrested before Moreno signed directive 883, restoring the subsidies, which ended the protests on 13 October.
Moreno has been criticized for inappropriate jokes, and gaffes about child labor and sex.
Actions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the global pandemic of COVID-19 on 11 March 2020, the Ecuadorian government declared a health emergency throughout the country. Preventive measures included home isolation for travelers arriving from countries with a higher number of reported cases, increased control measures, restrictions on mass events, strengthening of biosafety measures for healthcare personnel, the use of technological platforms for telemedicine, online education, and telecommuting, and a prohibition on the export of masks, soaps, and disinfectant gels. Subsequently, on 16 March, a state of emergency was decreed with the purpose of containing the transmission of the coronavirus (COVID-19), a situation that persisted until September.
Health crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic The health system crisis in Ecuador during the coronavirus pandemic worsened due to a lack of investment in hospital infrastructure and a reduction in public health spending in previous years. In 2019, 10,000 public sector professionals were laid off, with the majority being healthcare workers, as part of austerity measures imposed by Moreno and recommended by the International Monetary Fund. The lack of adequate equipment, including the inoperability of key medical equipment, hindered the response capacity to the pandemic. These deficiencies in the health system left the population vulnerable, leading to a critical situation where the deceased accumulated in the streets, highlighting the magnitude of the crisis in Ecuador.
Ecuador's health system was extremely overtaxed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The province of Guayas, with Guayaquil as the most affected city, recorded 1,937 cases, representing 70% of the national total of 2,748 cases. The BBC reported that Guayaquil had more COVID-19 deaths than entire countries. Additionally, the number of deaths in the country reached 927.000. The health system proved insufficient to cope with the growing demand, leading to a situation where the bodies of the deceased were left in the streets due to the system's lack of response and capacity.
Video footage of corpses in Guayaquil's streets reflected the critical situation the city was facing. Many funeral homes ceased operations out of fear of contracting the virus, causing delays in the removal of bodies. It was estimated that some of these deaths were not related to the coronavirus, but due to the lack of medical analysis, the causes of death could not be confirmed. The scarcity of resources in low-income neighborhoods led to wakes being held at home, and many families had to wait for more than three days for the bodies to be removed.
Nepotism and irregular management of COVID-19 vaccines Health Minister Juan Carlos Zevallos stirred controversy by prioritizing the vaccination of his relatives against COVID-19 instead of focusing on priority groups. This occurred while Ecuador was facing a severe national emergency with thousands of deaths due to the pandemic, and corpses were piling up in the streets of Guayaquil. It was discovered that doses intended for COVID-19 patients were diverted to vaccinate Zevallos' family members at private centers. Despite the complaints and calls for his resignation, Zevallos received strong support from Moreno. However, due to pressure from the National Assembly, he ultimately resigned from his position.
The Attorney General's Office requested precautionary measures to prevent Zevallos from leaving the country. Despite these measures, it was revealed that Zevallos had allegedly escaped to Miami.
Security measures