Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa has had quite a month, surviving not one, not two, but three alleged assassination attempts – the latest of which apparently involved gifts of jam and chocolate laced with poisonous chemicals.

The president made the claim to CNN’s Fernando del Rincon on Thursday, saying the gifts had contained “very high concentrations” of three chemicals, “and it was practically impossible for these to be present together at those levels” – unless the gifts had been spiked.

That comes just weeks after another alleged assassination attempt when a crowd throwing rocks surrounded Noboa’s car as he traveled to an engagement in Cañar province. Bullet marks were later found on the vehicle, according to energy minister Ines Manzano, while days earlier, according to Noboa, another crowd threw Molotov cocktails and homemade rockets at his vehicle.

While some critics are skeptical of the claims amid a lack of publicly available evidence – suggesting instead that they are meant to distract from growing public discontent and protests against Noboa’s government – the president insisted to CNN the threat was real.

“It wasn’t just sticks and stones. There were homemade rockets, Molotov cocktails, projectiles that could still kill you … and from high above, they threw rocks at the windshield and hood of the car,” Noboa said.

“If one of these homemade rockets hits you in the chest or head it would kill you.”

What isn’t in dispute is this: the Ecuadorian president is not short of enemies.

Noboa, the 37-year-old heir to a banana empire and one of Ecuador’s largest fortunes, won his first full term in office this year on a promise to crush the “narcoterrorists” who turned his country from a beacon of peace to the home of Latin America’s highest homicide rates.

Since then, he has leaned into the strongman approach and tough-on-crime agenda that made him so popular with voters in his first term, bringing him into the sights of powerful criminal groups.

But it’s not just those criminal networks who have turned against Noboa. With homicide rates rising once again and growing discontent over economic issues such as the price of diesel, Noboa is seeing his once remarkable approval ratings take a battering. In February 2024, 81% of Ecuadorians approved of him, according to local polling firm Cedatos. That figure has since declined to around 50%.

In Ecuador, where presidents tend to be “very, very unpopular,” according to Laura Lizarazo, lead Ecuador analyst at consulting firm Control Risks, that’s still a considerable level of support, but Noboa is facing increasing resistance from indigenous groups and civil society advocates over his unilateral decisions and attempts to strengthen his executive authority.

Particularly unpopular, especially among rural, Indigenous Ecuadorans, has been his canceling of a diesel subsidy – a move that has sparked widespread demonstrations – though he has also come under fire for subsuming Ecuador’s environmental watchdog into the ministry of mining, which critics fear will undermine regulation, and for his attacks on the judiciary when it ruled against several security measures, including blanket immunity for law enforcement.

“He has taken some very polarizing policy decisions that have not been well received by the public, and one example of that is precisely this latest wave of protests (over the diesel subsidies),” Lizarazo said.

During the protests, Noboa declared states of emergency in numerous provinces. The movement subsided after Noboa threatened to send in the military to break protesters’ roadblocks. The president later agreed to lower the price of diesel in two installments in December and February.

A violent turn

Meanwhile, there are even signs of strain regarding the ‘tough on crime’ message that once made Noboa so popular.

Recently, violence in Ecuador has taken a dramatic turn. After a brief respite last year, homicides rose 40% in the first seven months of 2025, while last week explosions from car bombs rocked Guayaquil and killed one person. And in September, there were two back-to-back prison massacres.

All this comes despite Noboa’s high-profile deployment of army units into Ecuador’s prisons and city streets, as well as the capture of its most-wanted criminal over the summer.

In his interview with CNN, Noboa acknowledged the worsening homicide statistics, but pushed back by claiming that a greater percentage of the killings involved criminal-on-criminal violence.

“The numbers are similar to 2023,” Noboa said, “The difference is that in 2023, six out of 10 (of those killed) had a criminal record. Today, nine out of 10 deaths have a criminal record. They are killing each other.”

Some critics question whether Noboa’s hardline approach is making matters worse.

Noboa “thinks that using the army is the best solution to counter drugs,” said John Paul Pinto, a political analyst based in Quito, Ecuador. “And what we’re seeing here in Ecuador is that that’s a bad strategy. It’s a very bad strategy. It’s not working.”

“Security is not only about the army, police, intelligence,” Pinto said. “Security is about (solving) economic problems, social problems, the participation of the private sector.”

Relations with Trump

Also controversial has been Noboa’s plan to revise Ecuador’s constitution to allow foreign militaries to occupy bases in Ecuador – a plan that will be subject to a referendum next month.

Noboa appears so confident that voters will agree with him that his administration has even drawn up plans for a US Navy base on Ecuador’s coast.

In the meantime, he has openly courted US President Donald Trump, spontaneously praising him on social media this week to declare that “Ecuador stands firm in the global fight against drug trafficking” – even as other countries in the region voice concern over US strikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific.

Noboa told CNN he supports the fight against drug trafficking, “which affects the entire society,” and said Ecuador had already submitted a formal request to conduct joint operations with US forces.

Lizarazo said the recent wave of violence in Ecuador was not likely to change Noboa’s hardline approach – rather, he would double down.

“For Noboa’s administration, those events are not a signal of a failed security strategy, but rather an argument for advancing more aggressive measures against organized criminal groups,” Lizarazo said. “That is key to the government’s identity, that security discourse and that strongman image and those hardline policies.”

An image of power

Noboa’s image has long been key to his power, analysts say. He’s young, social media-savvy and eager to participate in the politics of spectacle.

“He’s kind of an atypical leader for Ecuador,” Lizarazo said, “whose popularity and governing strategy is based on his image, his discourse, rather than a clear, evidence-based, comprehensive state strategy to address the key issues of the several crises the country is facing.”

Pinto pointed to Noboa’s fight with the country’s constitutional court over security measures earlier this year.

After the court suspended several of Noboa’s security policies, including immunity for law enforcement, Noboa personally led a march through the streets of Quito. Along the parade route, billboards showed pictures of the justices, their faces framed by a red-letter message saying: “These are the judges stealing our peace.”

“We are not going to permit change to be halted because of nine people who don’t even show their face,” Noboa told demonstrators in a speech the next day.

Critics warned the move could put the justices in danger, but it is hardly the only time he has shown a willingness to flout institutional norms.

Lizarazo noted how he had caused a diplomatic crisis in April 2024 by ordering security forces to storm the Mexican embassy to arrest a former vice president wanted on corruption charges who was seeking political asylum.

“He has clear authoritarian traits and tendencies that will very likely persist over the rest of his administration,” Lizarazo predicted. “He will continue testing institutional boundaries on executive power, and he will continue attempting to expand those executive powers to implement his strongman, hardline security agenda.”

As for the referendum, Lizarazo said it was a “polarizing question, but Noboa has the state apparatus and communication platforms in his favor.”

For his part, Noboa told CNN he intends to respect the results of the referendum whatever the result – but he’s confident Ecuador sees things the way he does.

“I’m convinced that people want real change,” Noboa said. (CNN)