Ecuadorans were yesterday to vote for a new president in the midst of a bloody drug war and a rash of political assassinations that cut short the bid of a popular candidate.
The remaining finalists — lawyer Luisa Gonzalez, 45, and banana empire heir Daniel Noboa, 35 — campaigned in bullet-proof vests as a climate of fear grips the once-peaceful country. Both have vowed to prioritize the escalating violence.
According to recent polls, the main concern of Ecuadorans is crime and insecurity in a country where the murder rate has quadrupled in the four years to last year. About 54,000 police were to be deployed to keep the vote safe.
Photo: Reuters
Long a haven between major cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, violence in the South American nation has exploded in the past few years as enemy gangs with links to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.
The fighting has seen at least 460 inmates massacred in prison since February 2021 — many beheaded or burned alive in mass riots. The bloodbath has also spilled into the streets, with gangs dangling headless corpses from city bridges and detonating car bombs outside police stations in a show of force.
About 3,600 Ecuadorans have been murdered so far this year, including nearly a dozen politicians, the Ecuadoran Organized Crime Observatory says.
In August, the violence claimed the life of anti-graft and anti-cartel journalist and presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, mowed down in a barrage of submachine gun fire after a campaign speech. He had been polling in second place.
A state of emergency was declared after Villavicencio’s assassination, and Noboa and Gonzalez campaigned with heavy security details.
Reporters following them have also had to don protective jackets and helmets and travel in armored vehicles. Many have received death threats.
Seven suspects in Villavicencio’s assassination were killed in prison.
Whoever wins this vote would be elected to only 16 months in office — completing the term of Ecuadoran President Guillermo Lasso who called a snap vote to avoid possible impeachment for alleged embezzlement.
They would be allowed to run again for the 2025-2029 presidential term and the one after that.
Both relative unknowns, a win for either candidate would make history: Gonzalez becoming Ecuador’s first woman president, or Noboa its youngest.
Gonzalez is the handpicked candidate of former Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa, a socialist who governed from 2007 to 2017 and lives in exile in Belgium to avoid serving an eight-year prison term for graft.
Noboa, is the son of one of Ecuador’s richest men who himself has five failed presidential bids behind his name.
Voting is compulsory for 13.4 million eligible voters in the country of 16.9 million.
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