Quito.- Fernando Villavicencio, the candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador assassinated on Wednesday, was the great absentee in the electoral debate held this Sunday by the seven remaining candidates to succeed the current president, Guillermo Lasso, in the extraordinary elections called for next Sunday, August 20.
The lectern that corresponded to Villavicencio was left empty on the stage where the rest of the seven contenders observed a minute of silence at the beginning before debating security for three hours; economy, employment and production; education, health, culture and social welfare; democracy, and sustainability and environment.
During the series of interventions, reference was made only three times to the journalist and former assemblyman who was shot by alleged Colombian hitmen as he left a rally in Quito.
The first was from businessman and security expert Jan Topic, who included Villavicencio among the more than 4,500 Ecuadorians who, in one of the many figures he released during the debate, stated that they have been victims of homicides in the country since the beginning of 2023. .
Then, former vice president Otto Sonnenholzner addressed the candidate Luisa González, from the Revolución Ciudadana movement.led by former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) to accuse the former president’s government of using intelligence units to persecute opponents such as Villavicencio.
And later, the candidate Xavier Hervás pointed out that Villavicencio “was assassinated because he was a person who bravely decided to face corruption,” for which he advocated fighting corruption so that “being brave is not expensive.”
Outside the venue of the debate, the journalist Christian Zurita, a colleague and friend of Villavicencio, who minutes before presented his registration to replace the murdered candidate and who must first be accredited by the National Electoral Council (CNE), remained.
The murder of Villavicencio shocked Ecuador when the wave of insecurity and violence in which the country has been immersed for more than two years reached the presidential election, and which the government attributes mainly to organized crime and drug trafficking.
In this maelstrom of murders and massacres of hitmen and armed groups, other candidates for public and political office had already been assassinated before, such as the mayor of Manta, Agustín Intriago, who was also remembered in the debate.
A few days before his murder, Villavicencio had denounced death threats against him and had indicated that they allegedly came from “Fito”, identified by the authorities as the leader of “Los Choneros”, one of the main criminal gangs operating in Ecuador. .
The candidate from the Construye movement had focused his campaign on a proposal to combat corruption and drug trafficking mafias.
The winners of these elections will complete the 2021-2025 period, interrupted by Lasso by invoking the constitutional mechanism of “cross death”, with which he dissolved the National Assembly (Parliament), with an opposition majority, when it was preparing to vote on his dismissal , and forced this extraordinary electoral process, where the head of state does not stand for re-election.
