QUITO, Ecuador - - Ecuadorians punished President Lucio Gutierrez's Patriotic Society party in local and provincial elections Sunday, throwing their support behind behind parties leading a growing opposition movement.
Preliminary results showed Gutierrez's party, which helped him win the presidential election in 2002, losing by hefty margins in the country's two main provinces and three cities of Guayaquil, Quito and Cuenca.
The preliminary results were from 25 to 30 percent of polling stations surveyed.
Ecuador's mainstream political parties seemed headed for victories in several key mayoral and provincial posts.
Under Gutierrez, "there have been so many mistakes that the people have answered, the people have democratically buried him," said former President Leon Febres Cordero, who now heads the right-wing Social Christian party.
The results could deal a blow to Gutierrez's already weak image and make it harder for him to push reforms of the oil and electricity sectors through a hostile Congress where his party has five of 100 seats.
Gutierrez, a 47-year old retired army colonel who helped lead a 2000 coup, has enjoyed a relatively calm spell as leader of one of Latin America's least stable nations.
He has kept a lid on government spending to keep the economy growing for its fifth straight year since Ecuador adopted the U.S. dollar as its currency to end an economic crisis in 2000.
As electoral results trickled in, Gutierrez said he was not worried about his opposition. "The people elected me to take tough decisions like those I have taken in economic policy, and now we're seeing the results," he said.
The president has seen his popularity plummet to just 18 percent in Quito from 62 percent when he took office in January 2003, according to local pollster Informe Confidencial.
The election results appeared to give a boost to parties like Quito's Democratic Left party and Guayaquil's Social Christian party, which dominate Congress and have sharply criticized Gutierrez during the campaign.
"Who has triumphed in this election? The three parties that are enemies to the government," said political analyst Jaime Duran, adding Indian party Pachakutik to the group.
According to Ecuador's Constitution, parties that fail to muster at least 5 percent of votes in two consecutive elections are declared defunct.
Patriotic Society, led by Gutierrez's relatives and retired army officers, won 4.77 percent of votes in congressional and local elections in 2002 and as a result must exceed this minimum level to survive.
