QUITO: Leftist Lenin Moreno was crossing his fingers on Monday for outright victory in Ecuador’s presidential vote, but risked being forced into a runoff that could shift the country to the right.

Sunday’s vote was a test of the legacy of outgoing President Rafael Correa, Moreno’s more hardline ally and an outspoken critic of the United States.

As the last ballots were being counted, Moreno, 63, hoped to top 40 per cent of the vote with a 10-point lead. That would spare him a runoff that polls indicate he may well lose.

But with nearly 88 per cent of the votes counted, he was still short with 39.09 per cent, against 28.28 per cent for his conservative competitor, Guillermo Lasso.

Moreno called for his Country Alliance party to “cross our fingers” for a first-round victory. “It seems to me perfectly likely that we will reach the 40 per cent we need,” he told cheering supporters late Sunday. “I like big challenges, strong challenges, and I am going to get through this one,” he said later in an interview with Telesur television.

But Lasso vowed on the Teleamazonas channel: “We will not rest until we achieve a definitive victory for the Ecuadoran people, who want change.”

The president of the electoral council, Juan Pablo Pozo, said he expected to announce complete results by midday Monday.

If Moreno wins he will be the first wheelchair-user to become president in Ecuador, and one of few world leaders ever to do so. His legs were paralysed when he was shot in a robbery in 1998.

If ex-banker Lasso wins the presidency, another pillar of the Latin American left will swing to the right.

Lasso has also said he will end WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy. Assange is taking refuge there for fear of extradition to the United States for publishing leaked documents that embarrassed Washi­ngton.

Published in Dawn, February 21st, 2017