The Constitutional President of the Republic of Ecuador serves as both the head of state and head of government of Ecuador, is the highest political office in the country as the head of the executive branch of government. As per the current Constitution, the President can serve two four-year terms. Prior to that, the president could only serve one four-year term. The current President of Ecuador is Rafael Correa, first elected in 2006. Correa was re-elected to a second term in 2009.

The Presidency of Ecuador has been marked by periods of instability, causing the office to change presidents frequently throughout the history of the country. At least five times, the duties of the president have been charged to a provisional government or a military junta. Often, the office has been left to an interim or acting president, many of whom would go on to become president. The President who has served the most terms in office is José María Velasco Ibarra, who served five. Before current re-elected president Rafael Correa, the last president to serve out his complete term in office was Sixto Durán Ballén, from 1992 - 1996.

Ecuador (ⁱ/ˈɛkwədɔr/ E-kwə-dawr), officially the Republic of Ecuador (Spanish: República del Ecuador [reˈpuβlika ðel ekwaˈðor], which literally translates to the "Republic of the Equator") is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, (along with Chile), that do not have a border with Brazil. The country also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) west of the mainland.

The main spoken language in Ecuador is Spanish. Ecuador straddles the equator, from which it takes its name, and has an area of 275,830 km² (106,500 sq mi). Its capital city is Quito, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1970s for having the best preserved and least altered historic center in Latin America. The country's largest city is Guayaquil. The historic center of Cuenca, the third largest city in the country, was also declared a World Heritage Site in 1999, for being an outstanding example of a planned inland Spanish style colonial city in the Americas. Ecuador is also home—despite its size—to a great variety of species, many of them endemic, like those of the Galápagos islands. This species diversity makes Ecuador one of the 17 megadiverse countries in the world. The new constitution of 2008 is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights.

Julian Paul Assange ( /əˈsɒnʒ/ ə-SONZH; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian computer programmer, political/internet activist, publisher, and journalist. He is best known as the editor in chief and founder of WikiLeaks, a media website which publishes information from whistleblowers. The site acts as a conduit for worldwide news leaks, with a stated purpose of creating open governance.

WikiLeaks has published material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya, toxic waste dumping in Côte d'Ivoire, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, and banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer. In 2010, WikiLeaks published Iraq War documents and Afghan War documents about American involvement in the wars, some of which was classified material. On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and its five international print media partners (Der Spiegel, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian and El País) began publishing U.S. diplomatic cables.

Assange was a hacker-activist in his youth, before becoming a computer programmer and then becoming internationally renowned for his work with WikiLeaks. He has lived in several countries and has made public appearances in many parts of the world to speak about freedom of the press, censorship, and investigative journalism. He has received numerous awards and nominations, including the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award, Readers' Choice for TIME magazine's 2010 Person of the Year, the 2011 Sydney Peace Foundation gold medal and the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.Snorre Valen, a Norwegian parliamentarian, nominated him for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado (6 April 1963) is the President of the Republic of Ecuador and was the president pro tempore of the Union of South American Nations. An economist educated in Ecuador, Belgium and the United States, he was elected President in late 2006 and took office in January 2007. In December 2008, he declared Ecuador's national debt illegitimate, based on the argument that it was odious debt contracted by corrupt and despotic prior regimes. He then pledged to fight creditors in international courts, and succeeded in reducing the price of the debt letters and continued paying all the debt. He brought Ecuador into the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas in June 2009. To date, Correa’s administration has succeeded in reducing the high levels of poverty, indigence, and unemployment in Ecuador.

Correa's first term in office had been due to end on 15 January 2011, but the new approved constitution written by the new National Assembly mandated general elections for 26 April 2009. In that election, Rafael Correa won in the first round with 51.9% of votes counted. It was the first time since 1979 in which a representative was elected without having to face a second round. Consequently, Correa began a new term in office due to end on 10 August 2013, which could be extended by reelection until 2017.

Luis Osvaldo Hurtado Larrea (born June 26, 1939 in Chambo, Chimborazo, Ecuador) is an Ecuadorian author and politician who served as President of Ecuador from 1981 to 1984.

In 1979, Hurtado was elected into office as the vice-president of President Jaime Roldós Aguilera. On May 24, 1981, Jaime Roldós Aguilera died in a plane crash. Hurtado succeeded Roldós Aguilera as President of Ecuador and served out the rest of his term.

In 1977, he authored an influential book on Ecuadorian politics titled El Poder Político en el Ecuador (English: Political Power in Ecuador).

Hurtado is a member of the Club of Madrid.