Fernando Villavicencio was a candidate for the governing party. The journalist and politician was shot several times as he was leaving a school in the capital where a political rally was taking place. The news of Villavicencio’s death was confirmed by the Clinica de la Mujer where he had been rushed.
– President Lasso
Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso has expressed his dismay and promised that the crime will not go unpunished. “Outraged and dismayed by the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. My sympathy and condolences to his wife and daughters. For his memory and his struggle, I assure you that this crime will not go unpunished,” Lasso wrote on social media. Lasso also reported that he had convened a meeting at the Carondelet presidential palace in the historic center of Quito of the so-called Security Cabinet, made up of executive authorities and other state functions. “The Security Cabinet will meet in a few minutes in Carondelet. I asked the president of the Cne (National Electoral Council), Diana Atamaint, the state attorney general, Diana Salazar, the president of the National Court of Justice, Ivan Saquicela and other state authorities to participate in this meeting as an urgent matter to address this event that shook the country,” said Lasso.
Unanimous condemnation of politics
The murder of Villavicencio, candidate of the governing majority in Ecuador’s next presidential elections, has shaken all of the country’s politics. The condemnation of the attack against the 59-year-old journalist and politician, heir to the current president Guillermo Lasso, was also unanimous on the part of his opponents in the presidential race. The absolute favorite in the polls, Luisa Gonzalez, candidate of former president Rafael Correa’s party, expressed her “indignation” by stating that Villavicencio’s death “is a mourning for everyone”. Similarly, the candidate of the Pachakutik indigenous movement, Yaku Peréz, running for the ballot, expressed his condolences and affirmed that “Ecuador does not deserve any more deaths”. “It’s time to unite and restore peace,” he said. The centre-right independent candidate, Otto Sonnenholzner, condemned the attack arguing that “the country has gotten out of hand” from the government. The presidential elections will be held on August 20 in the context of a serious security crisis caused by the increasingly strong presence of drug cartels in the country.
– The threats
Villavicencio himself had denounced in the days preceding the attack that he had received concrete threats from a narco leader named José Adolfo Macáas Villamar, alias “Fito”. The outgoing government of President Guillermo Lasso has so far tried to manage the serious situation with a massive deployment of soldiers and with extraordinary public order measures aimed at some provinces, but without concrete results.