QUITO, Ecuador: After a campaign characterized by the assassination of a prominent contender, Ecuador will hold a presidential election on Sunday.
The election campaigns promise to combat the lawlessness that has overtaken the hitherto calm country.
The small South American country has recently developed into a haven for multinational drug cartels looking to export cocaine from its borders, inciting a bloody conflict between local gangs. The death of several politicians in the run-up to the election highlighted the issue facing Ecuador’s leaders. The murder rate has surged above that of Mexico or Colombia.
The most prominent of them was an anti-corruption campaigner and presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who was shot dead in broad daylight as he left a political event just days before the election. According to political analyst Anamaria Correa Crespo, “These are completely unusual elections, in a situation basically of terror that Ecuador is going through… due to the current violence, but which manifested itself more acutely and atrociously” with Villavicencio’s death.
To ensure the security of the vote, which opens at 7:00 am local time (1200 GMT) and ends at 5:00 pm (2200 GMT), soldiers have been deployed countrywide. The first results are anticipated to trickle on the same night, and it will take ten days to announce the full results. President Guillermo Lasso announced the early election after dissolving the opposition-dominated Congress in May to avert an impeachment trial just two years after his election. Eight candidates are running; if no one wins outright, a runoff is planned for October 15. On October 26, the new president will begin their one-and-a-half-year term in office.
Luisa Gonzalez, a 45-year-old lawyer from the communist party of former president Rafael Correa, was in the lead in the polls before the murder. Correa went to Belgium, where he has been living in exile for six years after being sentenced to eight years in prison following a Villavicencio probe into corruption. Analysts claim that Correa’s alleged involvement in the murder, which he was compelled to deny, has damaged Gonzalez’s reputation. The assassination, according to Correa, “shifted the electoral leaderboard.”
Before his assassination, Villavicencio was second in the polls; another reporter, Christian Zurita, took his spot. In front of armed police officers and private security guards, Zurita told journalists on Thursday, “I am almost certain that he was assassinated because he said he would militarize the ports.” “A transnational mafia was responsible for his murder,” According to political commentators, right-wing businessman Jan Topic, 40, is the candidate whose popularity has increased the most. Known as “Rambo,” the former paratrooper and sharpshooter with the French Foreign Legion has sworn to destroy criminal gangs and construct more jails, like Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. Right-wing former vice president Otto Sonnenholzner and left-leaning Native American lawyer Yaku Perez are other prominent contenders.
On Sunday, two significant referendums coincide with an election in one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. One will urge voters to decide whether to keep drilling for oil in the Amazon, while the other will ask them to decide whether to prohibit mining in the Choco Andino forest. Located between the countries that produce cocaine, Colombia, and Peru, Ecuador was formerly considered a haven of peace. The small state, which is sandwiched between the Andes and the Amazon, is best
known for being the top producer of bananas in the world and for being the location of the biodiverse Galapagos Islands, where British scientist Charles Darwin formulated his theory of evolution.
However, during the past five years, foreign cartels have been drawn to the country by its vast ports, low security, and corruption due to rising pressure from the drug wars in Mexico and Colombia. Since 2021, 430 people have died in jails due to local gangs’ struggle for dominance, leaving a trail of charred and dismembered carcasses in their wake. As those who can afford it strive to protect themselves, businesses at manufacturers in Quito’s capital that outfit armored cars have soared. The most significant percentage of Latin Americans, 62 percent of Ecuadorians, reported feeling frightened in a Gallop survey earlier this year. In 2022, the nation attained a record-high murder rate of 26, surpassing that of Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil.
