Washington.- The Government of the United States affirmed this Thursday that the assassination of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio is a “blatant attack” against democracy and the rule of law in Ecuador.
Senior officials of the Joe Biden government, such as his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and the person in charge of Latin America at the State Department, Brian Nichols, They condemned the murder of Villavicencio, who was shot on Wednesday after an electoral rally.
“We extend our condolences to the family and loved ones of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. The United States strongly condemns this brazen act of violence and assault on democracy in Ecuador,” Sullivan, the highest-ranking US government official who has spoken so far, declared on Twitter.
In a similar vein, Nichols expressed himself, who through a message in Spanish on his official Twitter account highlighted the determination that Villavicencio had shown to confront the violence of the armed gangs that have hit Ecuador in recent years.
“The assassination of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, an outspoken opponent of organized crime, is a brazen attack on democracy and the rule of law. We urge a prompt and thorough investigation by the proper authorities and offer our support,” said Nichols.
Just yesterday, Wednesday, a few hours after the assassination, the US ambassador to Ecuador, Michael Fitzpatrick, strongly condemned the act of violence and expressed the US’s willingness to cooperate with the Ecuadorian authorities to investigate what happened.
Villavicencio was one of the eight presidential candidates who were running in the extraordinary general elections scheduled for the next day 20 in which the successor to the conservative Guillermo Lasso will be elected.
The 59-year-old candidate, a journalist and former member of the National Assembly who with his investigations into corruption had become one of the staunchest enemies of former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017), received a burst of shots at the end of a rally of his electoral campaign that he carried out in a school in Quito.
President Lasso decreed this Thursday the state of emergency for 60 days throughout the country and ratified that the extraordinary general elections will be held on August 20, as planned, but with a deployment of the military throughout the national territory.
For a little over two years, multiple reports of murders, massacres, extortions, attacks with explosives, among other crimes, have been reproduced daily, which have sown terror among Ecuadorians.
Ecuador closed 2022 with the highest rate of violent deaths in its history, registering 25.32 per 100,000 inhabitants, the vast majority associated, according to the Government, to organized crime and drug trafficking, which has gained strength on the coast and has turned to ports into large springboards for cocaine reaching Europe and North America.
