Photo: Henry Romero/REUTERS/Deutsche Welle
The murder of a presidential candidate and the fear of violence from drug gangs will weigh on Ecuadorians this Sunday (08.20.2023), when they go to the polls to elect a new president.
The assassination on August 9 of the candidate Fernando Villavicencio shuffled the cards on the electoral map and left a mystery about the result of the elections, in which everything indicates that none will have enough margin to avoid the ballot on October 15.
The once peaceful South American country has become a hub of operations for foreign drug cartels in recent years.s and locals that impose a regime of terror with killings, kidnappings and extortions. Added to the violence is an institutional crisis that has kept the country without Congress for three months, when the unpopular President Guillermo Lasso (right) decided to dissolve it and call early elections to avoid impeachment in a political trial for corruption.
Some 13.4 of the 18.3 million Ecuadorians must exercise the mandatory vote to elect president and vice president, as well as the 137 congressmen who will complete the current four-year period scheduled until May 2025.
The face of the late Villavicencio, a former centrist journalist who was second in the polls before his murder, will appear on the ballots along with seven other candidates, since they were already printed when he was shot by a Colombian hit man. He is replaced in the candidacy by the journalist Christian Zurita, his best friend who was also threatened and a partner in investigations that exposed major corruption scandals. One of them led to the sentence of former socialist president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) to eight years in prison.
At the antipodes, the presidency is disputed by Luisa González, 45, Rafael Correa’s dolphin and the only female candidate. Although Ecuador is banned for the publication of surveys, González is the favorite.
Before the assassination a poll showed Villavicencio behind González and then ex-sniper and ex-paratrooper Jan Topic (right), indigenous leader Yaku Pérez (left) and former vice president Otto Sonnenholzner (right). After Villavicencio’s murder, a new poll showed González still in front and Topic in second place.
Keep reading:
– Another attack in Ecuador: After the crime in Villavicencio, a candidate for Parliament is shot.
– Violence in Ecuador: How the presence of the Mexican cartels ended peace in the region.