The Construye movement decided this Sunday to appoint Christian Zurita as a candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador, replacing Fernando Villavicencioassassinated last Wednesday, after the designation of the candidate for the Vice Presidency did not prosper in the electoral bodies Andrea Gonzalez Nader.
“The candidate we have decided upon in agreement with build He is the fighting brother of Fernando Villavicencio Christian Zurita,” he said. gonzalez nader at a press conference in Quito.
On Saturday, the party decided to appoint gonzalez naderbut given the fears that the National Electoral Council (CNE) did not accept her candidacy, since she was nominated for the Vice Presidency, this Sunday she decided to appoint zuritajournalist who accompanied Villavicencio in their corruption investigations.
“We could not allow under any circumstances that the non-presence of Fernando after his heinous and vile crime can be lost,” he justified. zuritain a joint press conference to which they attended with a strong police device and bulletproof vests.
The Ecuadorian journalist, who worked for 15 years with Villavicencioassured that “his ideas are fully intact” and promised to defend them: “We are going to try to emulate his capacity and emulate his name,” he said zuritaand stressed as one of the red lines that they are not going to sit down to negotiate with “any mafia.”
He movement Builds will not participate this Sunday night in the electoral debate, where they asked to leave an empty chair for Villavicencio, who was shot dead on Wednesday afternoon at the exit of a rally at a school in Quito by alleged Colombian hitmen.
builds hoped that gonzalez nader was the candidate to replace Villavicenciobut after the non-response of the CNE to the requests and doubts about the candidacy, he has decided to back down.
«It would be understood that in moments of crisis (…) the CNE It should be that entity that had approached us,” he lamented. gonzalezwho denounced “the lack of will of a public body in a country in the midst of a democratic crisis.”
He also criticized that they cannot participate in the debate, which the other seven candidates will attend, and assured that “Without Ferdinand there is no debate, and despite the fact that the CNE not allow us to participate in today’s debate, we know that Ferdinand He is already the winner of that debate ».
He CNE decided to hold the elections on August 20, despite the assassination of one of the candidates, in a race led, according to some polls, by former Assemblywoman Luisa Gonzalezcandidate for the Citizen revolution (RC), the movement led by the former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
The winners of these elections will complete the period 2021-2025, interrupted by the invocation last May by the current president, William Lassoof the constitutional mechanism of “cross death”, with which he dissolved the National Assembly (Parliament), with an opposition majority, at the time he was preparing to vote on his dismissal.
In this way, he forced this call for extraordinary elections, which at the same time implied a reduction in his mandate, which he does not intend to complete until 2025, since the current head of state is not running for re-election.
