A presidential candidate in Ecuador who had been outspoken in regards to the hyperlink between organized crime and authorities officers was assassinated on Wednesday night at a political rally within the capital, simply days earlier than an election that was anticipated to be dominated by considerations over drug-related violence.
The candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, a former journalist, was gunned down exterior a highschool in Quito after chatting with younger supporters.
“When he stepped exterior the door, he was met with gunfire,” mentioned Carlos Figueroa, who labored for Mr. Villavicencio’s marketing campaign and was on the rally. “There was nothing to be accomplished, as a result of they have been photographs to the top.”
Mr. Villavicencio, 59, was polling close to the center of an eight-person race. He was among the many most vocal candidates on the problem of crime and state corruption.
It was the primary assassination of a presidential candidate in Ecuador and got here lower than a month after the mayor of Manta, a port metropolis, was shot to demise throughout a public look. Ecuador, as soon as a comparatively protected nation, has been consumed by violence associated to narco-trafficking within the final 5 years.
“Outraged and shocked by the assassination,” President Guillermo Lasso wrote on the social media platform X, previously referred to as Twitter, late Wednesday, blaming the demise on “organized crime.”
The nationwide prosecutor’s workplace mentioned an hour later, on the identical platform, {that a} suspect had been shot and apprehended amid crossfire with safety forces, and had died shortly afterward.
9 different individuals have been shot within the melee, based on the prosecutor’s workplace, together with two cops and a candidate for a Nationwide Meeting seat.
The killing shocked a nation already struggling deep financial, social and political upheaval.
Ecuador, on South America’s western edge, witnessed a rare transformation between 2005 and 2015 as hundreds of thousands of individuals rose out of poverty, driving the wave of an oil growth whose earnings have been poured into schooling, well being care and different social applications.
However extra lately, the nation has been reworked by an more and more highly effective narco-trafficking business, with international drug mafias becoming a member of forces with native jail and road gangs, unleashing a wave of violence in contrast to something within the nation’s latest historical past. Murder charges are at document ranges.
In the present day, the violence is commonly horrific and public, meant to induce concern and exert management: There are common reviews of automobile bombings, beheadings and kids being gunned down exterior their colleges.
To complicate the state of affairs, Mr. Lasso disbanded the nation’s opposition-led Nationwide Meeting in Could, a drastic move he made as he confronted impeachment proceedings over accusations of embezzlement.
The transfer, which is allowed underneath the Structure, meant that new elections for president and legislative representatives can be held. The vote by which Mr. Villavicencio was purported to compete is ready for Aug. 20.
Mr. Villavicencio, who had labored as a journalist, activist and legislator, gained prominence as an opponent of correísmo, the leftist motion of former President Rafael Correa, who served from 2007 to 2017 and nonetheless holds political sway in Ecuador.
In 2017 he efficiently ran for a seat within the Nationwide Meeting, the place he served till the legislature was dissolved by Mr. Lasso.
