The empty chair may not be more symbolic than tomorrow Sunday, when the mandatory debate in which the candidates for the President of the Republic are to be presented is missing Fernando Villavicencio, who was killed by assassins last Wednesday, during the day, as he was leaving a meeting in the central and residential area of ​​Quito.

No more Villavicencio, a persistent fighter against corruption, who based his campaign towards Carondelet precisely on the promise of a frontal fight against organized crime. He called himself a brave candidate and while training as such he fell before the murderous bullets of ‘gatilleros’, as in the slang of the underworld those who specialize in contract killings are called. A commission that the country is eagerly awaiting to be presented immediately.

The election debate will not change the date, confirmed the president of HNS

How long will the presidential debate last for the 2023 Ecuador elections?

The discussion, therefore, could not be more expected than now, when the Ecuadorian population is terrified by this terrible criminal action and demands, as never before, urgent, valid and above all logical answers, from those who want to manage it, about the plan that each of them proposes to return of peace to this once “island of peace”.

Electoral debates are mandatory in Ecuador from 2020

You shouldn’t expect anything less. We cannot accept less. Inevitably, the question of security will be at the center of the discussion, although five of them have been asked, and there could be counter-questions. It remains to be hoped that it will not become, as on previous occasions, a hasty and unconvincing recitation of promises and the occasional attack, all subject to a rigid format of exact times and closed microphones, what with the idea of ​​”fairly” punishing those who have something to say and rewards words.

In the current circumstances… we will not be able to accept anything less than clarity and transparency in the security proposal…

It is time to determine the sustainability of an absolutely repressive position, that of a frontal attack on organized crime proclaimed by more than one applicant, and to measure its effects and “collateral damage”; or less radical positions that could delay their effects, first by holding back what now seems an inevitable bloody trail to immediately take the initiative of far-reaching, less-than-actor solutions.

Tomorrow’s televised event is an excellent opportunity to see beyond the nose when it comes to safety. Put clichéd phrases aside and take the topic seriously. Organized crime settled here, but it could only do so when the conditions were met for the country to be attractive. The sum of all declines, social, educational, labor, attention to elementary basic services, lack of work, is a reflection of bad public policies, ancestral inefficiency of the economy or the reign of corruption and impunity. How not to end up like this in a scenario like the current one, where the state of emergency proposed by the Government has already become an anecdote and the subject of many memes.

Under the current circumstances, we who will be watching the debate will not be able to accept anything less than clarity and transparency in the security proposal and in the others that together result in the peace we are all crying out for. For the debaters to take it seriously, in honor of that empty chair. (OR)