Correa wins re-election in Ecuador

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has proclaimed victory in the country's presidential election, as partial results showed him leading with 57 percent of the vote.

"We are here to serve you," Correa told a crowd from the balcony of the presidential palace in Quito on Sunday. "Nothing for us, everything for you: the people who deserve the right to be free."

Correa won 56.7 percent of the vote against 24 percent for his closest challenger, former banker Guillermo Lasso, with 36 percent of the vote counted.

Lasso conceded as first official results were released, congratulating Correa for "a victory deserving respect".

Correa's social and economic programmes have made him a popular leader, with an approval rating of nearly 85 percent.

Correa told reporters his goal is to now further reduce poverty, which the United Nations says dropped from 37 percent to 32 percent since he first took office in 2007, as he deepens what he terms his "citizens' revolution".

Correa, 48, has brought political stability to the oil-exporting nation of 14.6 million people that cycled through seven presidents in the decade before he first took office.

He won re-election in April 2009 after voters approved a constitutional rewrite that mandated a new ballot, and he would be legally barred from running again following a victory.

The opposition's inability to unite behind a single candidate in Sunday's vote helped give Correa a comfortable lead. Former President Lucio Gutierrez won 5.9 percent. The rest of the vote was divided among five other candidates.

A self-declared foe of neo-liberal economics, Correa has taken on big business and media groups, imposing new contracts on oil companies and renegotiating the country's debt.

After clashing with privately-owned media, which he accuses of backing a police revolt in 2010, Correa barred his ministers from talking with opposition newspapers.

The opposition says Correa tolerates no dissent and is intent on amassing power. Critics also accuse him of scaring away foreign capital, pointing to his friendships with the leaders of Cuba and Venezuela, although the Ecuadoran president has been more pragmatic than his leftist allies.

Victory for Correa will cheer the leftist ALBA bloc of Latin American and Caribbean nations at a time when the group's indisputable leader, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, is struggling to recover from cancer.