The assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio not only represents a pre-election earthquake with unpredictable consequences when there are only nine days left before the polls open in Ecuador. The enormous impact of the attack also dashed the hopes of those who refused to accept the evidence of the entrenched power of the drug trafficking and of the organized crimewhich in a few years has pushed the Andean country to rub shoulders with the Colombia of other times and the Mexico of today.
“We are not going to back down, the State is firm and democracy does not give up in the face of the brutality of this murder. We are not going to hand over democratic institutions to organized crime even if it is disguised as political organizations. Given the loss of a democrat and a fighter, the elections are not suspended,” said President Guillermo Lasso, who throughout the legislature had Villavicencio’s parliamentary support in several transcendental votes.
The president declared three days of national mourning and decreed the Exception status nationwide for 60 days. Throughout the day, rumors of a “step forward” by the military and police spread on social networks and in the media.
The worldwide condemnation of the crime transmitted international solidarity to the Government of Quito, but also concern about the “attack on democracy” in the American country. “A brazen act of violence,” Washington said, while Joseph BorrellHigh Representative of the European Union, highlighted the “attack against the institutions”.
The candidate had denounced in the previous hours the threats from the head of the Los Choneros gang, associated with the Sinaloa cartel. Villavicencio felt he was in the crosshairs of different dark powers and for this reason he repeated a phrase to his friends in the guild: “If they are going to kill me, let them kill me”. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador assured this Thursday that there are no indications that the Mexican cartel is behind the attack.