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A presidential candidate in Ecuador who had been outspoken concerning 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 issues over drug-related violence.
The candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, a former journalist, was gunned down exterior a highschool in Quito after talking to 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 had been pictures 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 difficulty 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 often called 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 had been shot within the melee, in keeping with the prosecutor’s workplace, together with two law enforcement officials 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 income had been poured into training, well being care and different social applications.
However extra not too long ago, the nation has been remodeled by an more and more highly effective narco-trafficking trade, with overseas drug mafias becoming a member of forces with native jail and road gangs, unleashing a wave of violence not like something within the nation’s latest historical past. Murder charges are at report ranges.
As we speak, the violence is usually horrific and public, meant to induce concern and exert management: There are common reviews of automotive bombings, beheadings and youngsters being gunned down exterior their colleges.
To complicate the scenario, Mr. Lasso disbanded the nation’s opposition-led Nationwide Meeting in Could, a drastic transfer 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 during which Mr. Villavicencio was imagined 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.
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