EspañolEcuadorian President Rafael Correa accused US hackers of temporarily shutting down the National Electoral Council’s (CNE) web page on election day.
Correa dismisses the opposition’s claim of an alleged fraud in connection with the irregular variation of the results between opposition candidate Guillermo Lasso and the ruling party’s Lenin Moreno.
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“For 18 minutes the CNE’s web page shut down, due to American hacker’s cyber-attacks, which also affected ECU911 (national emergency service) and the Alianza Pais (Correa’s political party),” said the President on Twitter.
Correa said that these “attacks” from the United States are “the result of what is increasingly a clear plan of the right to create chaos, because they do not accept their obvious electoral defeat.”
He also responded to a “challenge” proposed by the opposition’s vice presidential candidate for CREO, Andrés Páez, who also called on Twitter for a computer audit “of the system’s shut down.”
Correa said that there will be proof that “there was no shut down.”
…delegados de CREO.
Lo que hubo es la caída durante 18 minutos de la PÁGINA WEB del CNE -no del SISTEMA-, por ataques de hackers desde…— Rafael Correa (@MashiRafael) April 6, 2017
…EEUU, ataques que también sufrieron las web del ECU911 y de AP, fruto de lo que cada vez más claramente es un plan de la derecha para…
— Rafael Correa (@MashiRafael) April 6, 2017
Tweet: “CREO delegates. What happened was an 18-minute shutdown on the CNE’s WEB PAGE -not the system- due to hacker attacks from…”
Tweet: “… the USA, attacks which were also suffered by ECU911 and AP, due to evermore clear right-wing plan.”
“Lasso never had the lead, as they falsely say, and to propose that the results of the web page’s shut down changed that, is as ridiculous as arguing that because the Banco de Guayaquil system went down (bank owned by the opposition leader), they changed the balance of my account,” said Correa.
CREO argues that before the access to the CNE’s web page was denied, Lasso was winning, but after the connection was reestablished, he “suspiciously” fell behind.
CREO traced the “fraud” in the April 2nd elections and says there are 1,795 “irregular records” that equal to 592,350 votes, slightly more than double the 229,000 votes that the ruling Lenin candidate Moreno allegedly won by.
Sources:El Comercio; La República