Fernando Villavicencio, a candidate who was running in Ecuador’s presidential election and spoke out against corruption and organized crime, was assassinated Wednesday.
The New York Times reported that Villavicencio, 59, a former journalist, was leaving a campaign rally in the country’s capital of Quito when he was fatally shot.
According to footage posted on social media, he was surrounded by supporters and escorted by security to a waiting vehicle when gunshots were heard, per CNN. The attack also injured nine people, including a candidate for the National Assembly and two police officers.
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On X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the national prosecutor’s office announced that a suspect, who was badly injured in an exchange with security personnel, was apprehended and later died in police custody. The office added that raids were conducted and six people linked to the case were detained, per the New York Times.
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Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated in Quito on Aug, 9, 2023.
AP Photo/Juan Diego Montenegro
The death of Villavicencio comes 10 days before Ecuador was to hold its presidential election, which will go on as planned, Electoral Council President Diana Atamaint said, per CNN. Villavicencio was in the middle of the pack of eight candidates running for presidential office, behind frontrunner Luisa González.
Following the assassination, Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso called for three days of national mourning and a state of emergency for 60 days, CNN reported.
“Outraged and shocked by the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio,” the president said in a statement posted on X. “My solidarity and condolences to his wife and daughters. For his memory and for his fight, I assure you that this crime will not go unpunished.”
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Lasso, who is not seeking re-election, per CBS News, later added in the statement: “Organized crime has come a long way, but the full weight of the law is going to fall on them.”
Galo Valencia, an uncle of Villavicencio, blamed the government for the lack of security for his nephew’s killing. Speaking from the scene of the shooting, he said, per The Guardian: “What we witnessed was like a horror film. The death of my relative. I have no words for what’s happening in the country. They just killed democracy.”
In his last speech before his death, Villavicencio, a candidate for the Build Ecuador Movement, said that he would stamp out corruption and jail Ecuador’s “thieves,” the Associated Press reported. He previously said that he had been getting death threats, including from affiliates of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.
Ecuador’s upcoming presidential election comes as the country is experiencing turmoil amid the influx of organized crime due to a rise in drug trafficking, per BBC News. Ecuador’s homicide rate increased two-fold from 2021 to 2022, reported CBS News.
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Villavicencio, who served in Ecuador’s National Assembly, said if elected as president he would crack down on the gangs. In May, he told CNN En Español Conclusiones that his nation had become a “narco state” and called for a fight against the “political mafia.”
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“Electorally speaking, this year is the most violent in our history,” Arianna Tanca, an Ecuadorian political scientist, told the New York Times. “I think that what is going to change is the way we conceive of politics. I think that from now on it becomes a high-risk profession.”
Voting in the presidential election will go on as planned on Aug. 20 with the military mobilized to guarantee security, per Reuters.
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