Fresh off his unexpectedly strong election win, Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa, sworn in Saturday, is seeking to cement his authority with a crime bill that would give his government emergency powers of the kind used in El Salvador.

The law is intended to rein in the drug and extortion gangs that have overrun the country, and would allow searches without warrants, preemptive pardoning of police and soldiers accused of human rights violations and expand the use of pretrial detention.

“There will be no truce against crime,” Noboa said in his inauguration speech. “We are going to attack this country’s criminal economies and we will finish them off.”

Noboa submitted his bill days after his defense and interior ministers visited El Salvador, where the government of President Nayib Bukele has used a state of emergency to round up tens of thousands of suspected gang members.

Noboa, a 37-year-old ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, took power in a snap election in 2023 and now starts his first four-year term.

He forged a ruling coalition in congress ahead of this weekend’s inauguration, and investors hope that rapidly passing the crime bill will show he has the ability to advance his pro-business agenda. Ecuador’s economy contracted 2% last year, the weakest performance in South America.

The president submitted his fast-track bill after 11 special forces soldiers were gunned down in an ambush at a remote illegal mine in the jungle, the latest in a long series of atrocities committed by the organized crime gangs that have brought chaos to the Andean nation. The law would also boost the government’s ability to seize criminal assets.

The legislation represents “a strategy to retain popular support that says we need a firm hand,” said political scientist Sofia Cordero at Universidad Espiritu Santo, speaking in a phone interview.

Since the April 12 election, the nation’s debt is the best performer among sovereign dollar bonds tracked by Bloomberg, as investors reacted with relief to the defeat of Noboa’s socialist rival.

‘Clearly dictatorial’

Some Ecuadorians have warned of the risks of excess concentration of power in Noboa’s hands. Ramiro García, a former president of Ecuador’s federation of lawyers, said that the crime bill is “an attempt to give the executive branch powers that are clearly dictatorial.”

Despite this, Ecuador’s crime problem is so overwhelming that the bill is unlikely to face much difficulty in congress. Even the opposition socialist party has indicated a willingness to compromise, said political scientist Karen Sichel at Universidad de las Américas in Quito, in a phone interview.

Homicides have soared more than sixfold since 2018 as gangs fight for control, especially around the nation’s Pacific ports where they try to insinuate packages of cocaine into shipments of fish, shrimp and bananas.

During his first year and a half in office, Noboa declared war on drug gangs, hiked the VAT and secured a $4.4 billion agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

In his speech, during which he quoted Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in German, Noboa promised to modernize the state-owned oil and electrical companies, to provide clear conditions for foreign investors and to work to boost social services and employment especially for young Ecuadorians.

“We are creating a safe, stable and competitive environment that will boost growth, protect investments and guarantee real opportunities” while fighting corruption, he said.

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