The political party of Ecuador’s assassinated presidential hopeful, Fernando Villavicencio, on Saturday picked his would-be vice presidential candidate to replace him as the party standard-bearer, just a week before the election.
Villavicencio’s Movimiento Construye party announced on social media that it had tapped Andrea Gonzalez to replace the slain 59-year-old in the vote on Sunday.
Later on Saturday, the deceased candidate’s widow criticized the party’s replacement as unlawful.
Photo: Cesar Pasaca / API / AFP
Villavicencio, an ex-lawmaker and journalist with a track record of exposing corruption, was gunned down last week after leaving a campaign event in the capital Quito despite his own government-provided security detail.
Six suspects — all Colombian nationals whom police accuse of links to criminal groups — have been charged with the murder and remain in custody.
Veronica Sarauz, Villavicencio’s widow, told reporters on Saturday that she holds the state directly responsible for her husband’s murder.
“The government still has to provide a lot of answers for everything that happened,” she said, after arriving at a news conference with an armed police escort and wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet.
Sarauz described the party decision to tap Gonzalez as “arbitrary” and said it breaks a law that forbids the vice presidential candidate from stepping down.
Separately, authorities on Saturday transferred a powerful gang leader, accused of threatening Villvicencio, to a maximum security prison in a massive military and police operation, officials said.
At dawn, about 4,000 heavily armed agents entered Prison 8 in Guayaquil, where the head of the powerful Los Choneros criminal group, Jose Adolfo Macias, alias “Fito,” has been held since 2011.
Images shared by security forces showed a bearded man in his underwear, with his hands on his head in some shots and lying on the floor with his arms tied in others.
Lasso announced on social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, that Fito had been transferred to La Roca, a 150-person maximum security prison that is part of the same penitentiary complex where the gang boss was already being held.
Additional reporting by AFP
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