With 93.8 percent of the votes counted, Gutierrez, of the January 21 Patriotic Society Party, obtained 54.46 percent against 45.54 percent for Noboa, the candidate for newly-founded National Institutional Action Renovation Party (PRIAN).

With his victory, Gutierrez will become Ecuador's sixth president in six years.

Gutierrez led a coup in January 2000 ousting then President Jamil Mahuad who was unpopular for corruption and blamed for Ecuador's worst economic crisis in decades. In the election campaign, Gutierrez had highlighted his anti-corruption image in abid to garner voter support.

The former army colonel, who ran for the presidency for the first time, also pledged to increase the education budget, improve housing for the poor and seek closer trade ties with regional trade blocs outside Latin America. While he is mainly backed by left-wing political groups, Gutierrez has expressed his intention not to join the trend of the leftists opposing globalization.

Gutierrez was expelled from the army for his leadership role in the 2000 coup and spent six months in a military prison. The president-elect, 45, is married to Elsa Jimena Bohorquez and has two daughters.

Noboa, 52, who runs a banana and shipping empire, had stressed in his campaign the fact that he could rely on his friends in the international financial circles to draw more foreign investments to Ecuador and thus create more jobs.

Ecuador, an Andean nation of 12 million people, has since 1996 seen two of its five presidents driven out of power amid political and economic troubles.

(Xinhua News Agency November 25, 2002)