Who was Fernando Villavicencio, the Ecuadoran presidential candidate who was assassinated?
Villavicencio, 59, was a former investigative journalist and activist who served as a member of Ecuador’s Nationwide Meeting from 2021 till it was dissolved in Could.
He was standing as a candidate for the Movimiento Construye political occasion within the race to succeed Lasso. He was amongst a number of main candidates within the first spherical of voting on Aug. 20, although he was not the front-runner.
In keeping with his marketing campaign web site, Villavicencio was born in Alausí canton, in Ecuador’s central Chimborazo province, on Oct. 11, 1963.
He studied journalism earlier than working for Ecuador’s nationwide oil firm, Petroecuador, and later as a commerce unionist, the web site stated. He then centered on journalism and in addition at one level labored as an adviser to Nationwide Meeting member Cléver Jiménez.
Villavicencio was a frequent critic of the administration of President Rafael Correa. In 2013, his house was raided, and he was sentenced to 18 months in jail for defamation towards the president the next yr. He fled to Indigenous territory inside Ecuador and was later granted political asylum in neighboring Peru. He returned to his house nation in September 2017, after Correa left workplace.
After being elected to Ecuador’s Nationwide Meeting in 2021, he served because the chair of its Fee for Oversight and Political Management, the place he pledged to deal with investigating corruption.
He was married and had three kids.
What will we learn about Fernando Villavicencio’s dying?
Video footage shared on social media and confirmed by police seems to point out Villavicencio entering into his automotive as he left the rally within the north of Quito on Wednesday night, earlier than a number of gunshots rang out.
He was shot within the head a number of instances, based on two federal safety officers, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate the main points of the assassination. The candidate was rushed to a close-by clinic, the place he was pronounced useless.
9 different individuals had been injured, together with a candidate for Nationwide Meeting and two cops, based on the Ecuadoran lawyer normal’s workplace.
One suspected gunman was shot and detained by authorities on the scene, and died in police custody, based on the workplace.
Lasso, the president, stated the attackers had additionally thrown a grenade to cowl their escape, but it surely did not explode and was safely detonated by police.
What had been Fernando Villavicencio’s insurance policies?
Villavicencio’s marketing campaign centered closely on drug trafficking and gang violence.
“In my authorities, the safety forces won’t act in response to the actions of criminals, we’ll act first,” he tweeted the day earlier than his dying, pledging to seek out the leaders of felony teams. “Solely somebody who isn’t linked to the mafias can defeat the mafias.”
He had additionally pledged to construct a high-security jail within the Amazon to cope with the leaders of organized crime.
Earlier than his dying, Villavicencio had spoken out about threats he had confronted on the marketing campaign path.
On July 31, he advised reporters that he and his marketing campaign crew had obtained a severe menace from the chief of a gaggle linked to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and, referring to detained crime boss José Adolfo Macías by his alias, “Fito,” stated: “If I proceed to check with him and his construction, they’d assault me or make an try on my life.”
However he was defiant, saying: “Right here I’m exhibiting my face. I’m not frightened of them.” Video from one other marketing campaign occasion, which was posted by his official account, confirmed him saying that he wouldn’t put on a bulletproof vest.
After the killing, three of the eight candidates within the election race — Jan Subject, Yaku Pérez and Bolívar Armijos — introduced they had been suspending their campaigns out of respect for Villavicencio.
However Diana Atamaint, the president of the Nationwide Electoral Council, stated voting would happen as deliberate on Aug. 20.
In his early Thursday assertion, Lasso, the outgoing president, introduced three days of mourning and a nationwide state of emergency, saying that the armed forces would mobilize throughout the nation to ensure safety of residents and “free and democratic elections.”
He stated that investigations into the killing are ongoing, including: “We don’t doubt that this assassination is an try and sabotage the electoral course of.”
Arturo Torres, Samantha Schmidt and Diana Durán contributed reporting.
