Ecuador's president has claimed a "historic victory" in a referendum on a new constitution, as exit polls showed 65 to 70 per cent of voters backing his vision of a "21st century socialism" for the Latin American nation.

Rafael Correa says his proposed social reforms will benefit the hardworking majority and diminish the power of a political class he says is responsible for making Ecuador one of the region's most corrupt countries.

A quick-count by Participacion Ciudadana, a pollster authorised by the election agency, showed Correa winning 65 per cent of the vote as polls closed on Sunday.

An exit poll by Cedatos-Gallup, a private opinion research firm, said 70 per cent of the 9.6 million voters backed the new charter that gives the president more power to regulate Ecuador's economy which is based primarily on oil exports.

"The new constitution has won overwhelmingly even here," Correa told cheering supporters in Guayaquil, an opposition stronghold.

Correa had asked the Organisation of American States (OAS), in charge of election monitors, to validate the final vote tally in the province.

"You have to remain very alert to the losing side's usual argument discrediting a victory ... as a fraud," Correa told OAS officials earlier this week.

Enrique Correa, an OAS spokesman, said that his group has so far found "no signs of fraud in the works".

Earlier this month Correa said the referendum was the "last opportunity for peaceful change in Ecuador", in reference to the crisis in global capital markets.

Al Jazeera's Mariana Sanchez reporting from Quito says wealth distribution and free education were the two key issues for many voters.

The new constitution would also close down all foreign military bases in the country, forcing the US to pull out its regional anti-drug operations, which have run for nearly 10 years from an air base in the port city of Manta.

'Hyperpresidentialist'

Branded as "hyperpresidentialist" by the conservative opposition, the new constitution would allow the president to run for two consecutive, four-year terms, dissolve congress and call early elections.

But supporters say the constitution's 444 new articles to expand the president's powers are necessary to end political instability in a country that, in the last 10 years, has removed three presidents from office before their terms were finished.

Correa, 45, has already announced his intention to run for re-election in February 2009, if the new charter is approved.

Jaime Nebot, the leader of the opposition Social Christian party and the mayor of Guayaquil, has criticised the constitutional changes, which he says would create a centralised form of government that would threaten private property.

"Do you think we can model ourselves after Venezuela, a country swimming in oil money, but whose people have to line up to get food?

"Or Bolivia, a country split down the middle because its government doesn't understand?" Nebot recently said.

Ecuador's proposed changes are similar to those that have been made in Venezuela and Bolivia but fall short of nationalising the country's resources as its neighbours have done.

The Roman Catholic Church, a major player in the predominantly Catholic country, has also criticised the new constitutional changes, in particular articles it says will lead to the legalisation of abortion and same-sex marriage.

Ecuador's emigrant communities, the biggest being in Spain, the US and Italy, were also eligible to vote in the referendum.

About 60,000 police and military personnel were deployed around the country and sales of alcoholic drinks were banned from Friday until Monday.


Al Jazeera and agencies