Lenín Moreno says he will fight poverty and corruption and go easier on the media – but as his election opponent refuses to concede, trouble lies ahead

As he prepares to become the world’s only wheelchair-using head of state, Ecuador’s Lenín Moreno is promising to triple poverty relief, crack down on corruption and ease up on the media.

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The ambitious policies and affable tone of the new president-elect are designed to shake off accusations that will be in the shadow of his predecessor Rafael Correa, who dominated this South American country’s politics for the past decade.

“I will make the decisions in the next government. I will bring to bear my own style,” Moreno – who was Correa’s vice-president between 2007 and 2013 – told foreign journalists in Quito on Wednesday.

But his ability to realise his goals is likely to be limited by financial constraints and political tensions that were heightened by last Sunday’s bitterly contested election.

Moreno clinched victory by about two percentage points, sealing Ecuador’s position as the standard bearer for “21st century socialism” in the face of recent defeats of the left in several other Latin American countries.

But problems lie ahead.

His opponent, Guillermo Lasso, has refused to concede defeat. The rightwing former bank boss has rejected the election results as “illegitimate” and his demand for a recount of votes has been granted. His supporters have been picketing the country’s electoral council headquarters in Quito and Guayaquil since the vote on Sunday.

Moreno’s amiable style may not be enough to build bridges despite his offer to “extend the hand” towards Lasso’s CREO movement, which won 48% of the vote – a share most analysts say came on the back of anti-Correa sentiment.

Moreno has been congratulated on his win by the United States and heads of state across the Americas. Luis Almagro, secretary-general of the Organisation of American States, which sent election monitors to Ecuador, has also recognised him as president-elect.

Moreno said Lasso was exercising his constitutional right, joking that in Ecuador it was called the “right to throw a tantrum”.

But even if the tension peters out, the level of polarisation in the country is unlikely to subside, said Simon Pachano, a political scientist with the Latin American Faculty of Social Science in Quito.

“Down the line, there will be conflicts over the handling of the economy. What’s more, [Moreno] doesn’t have the strength of leadership of Rafael Correa, which has acted as a kind of fortress against social protest.”

Pachano said Moreno’s best option was to seek alliances with political opponents, something which his self-declared good humour and tolerance could make easier.

With his fondness of singing in public, his enthusiasm for quantum physics and his advocacy of humour – which he used to combat his own depression after he was partially paralysed when he was shot in a robbery in 1998 – Moreno is a something of a maverick in Latin American politics.

Moreno stressed his respect for press freedom was one of his key differences with the outgoing president, who has launched lawsuits and verbal attacks on his country’s media.

“I have some differences with [Correa] over freedom of expression. I think the president should be ready to tolerate much more than any ordinary citizen,” he said.

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Correa provided more stability than any leader in a century, but while he left the country richer and more egalitarian, it is also more divided.

After a decade of growth, the economy has faltered. There is now less money for welfare spending and heavy external debt, particularly to China.

While official figures say debts to China total $8.32bn – or about a third of the total $26.5bn external debt – analysis by the China-Latin America Finance Database of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based thinktank, points to a figure of $17.4bn.

Moreno responded to criticisms that the government had “mortgaged” the country to China, saying the country “has given us credit without asking big questions and it’s served us”.

Social spending doubled during most of Correa’s tenure, but with less money in government coffers, Moreno said he would seek further external credit in order to expand the social policies of the country’s “citizens’ revolution” project, which amounts to about 4% of annual GDP.

As well as tripling a cash transfer to poor households, Moreno says he will boost state pensions and provide 100,000 subsidised houses a year as part of a “cradle-to the-grave” social programme called Toda Una Vida, or A Lifetime.

After warning the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, to keep out of Ecuadorean politics, Moreno said he would continue to grant him asylum in the country’s embassy in London as part of his government’s commitment to human rights.

Moreno pledged “major surgery” against corruption, a key election issue following allegations by the US Department of Justice that the Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht had paid out $33.5m in bribes in Ecuador between 2007 and 2016.