Candidate denounces attack in Ecuador, one day after the murder of Villavicencio

A candidate for assembly in Ecuador denounced an attack against him just one day after the presidential candidate was assassinated Fernando Villavicenciowhen he was shot at the exit of an electoral rally in Quito.

Estefany Puente, who is running for assembly in the province of Los Ríos for the Claro que se puede alliance, of the presidential candidate Yaku Pérez, stated on social networks that she had been the victim of an attempt on her life when the car in which she was traveling was shot. the city of Quevedo.

“Today I have been the victim of an attack against my integrity”asserted Puente about the event, which occurred on Thursday.

The candidate assured that this crisis of insecurity is the product of having been “forgotten by an inoperative government, wrapped in corruption, mafias, the result of previous governments (of the fugitives) and the current one, of those who negotiate with criminal groups and are protected by such.”

Likewise, Puente thanked Yaku Pérez for the expressions of solidarity that he has transmitted to him after receiving the attack.

The photos disseminated on social networks and by local media show a vehicle with electoral campaign decorations that has apparently received a bullet impact on the left side of the front window, where the driver is located.

Los Ríos is one of the two provinces next to the coastal Manabí and the municipality of Durán, located in the metropolitan area of ​​the city of Guayaquil, where a state of emergency had been decreed since the end of July to appease the rise in crime that recorded in those areas.

As a result of the deadly attack suffered by Villavicencio, the government of conservative President Guillermo Lasso declared on Wednesday night a new state of emergency for 60 days throughout the national territory to allow the deployment of the Armed Forces, a measure that suspends some fundamental rights as the inviolability of home.

As on other previous occasions where this measure has also been taken, the Executive thus seeks to give the population greater peace of mind and curb the wave of insecurity that has plagued the country for more than two years and that the authorities link above all with the gangs organized crime and drug trafficking.

The assassination of Villavicencio has shocked Ecuador as he is a presidential candidate, although this type of attack, like the one suffered by Puente, had already been carried out in previous months against other candidates and politicians.

In a similar way, the mayor of Manta, Agustín Intriago, and a candidate for assembly in the province of Esmeraldas, on the border with Colombia, were assassinated weeks ago, while the mayor of Durán was also the victim of an attack.

Likewise, in the local elections last February, a candidate for mayor was assassinated one day before the vote.

This violence, which is also transferred to the streets, especially on the coast, where drug trafficking routes are located and the ports that mafias use as large cocaine shuttles to Europe and North America, has caused Ecuador to close 2022 with 25.32 homicides per every 100,000 inhabitants, the highest figure in its history.

It is in this context that these extraordinary elections are being held, where the security crisis was practically the only topic of discussion even before the assassination of Villavicencio, allegedly carried out by Colombian hitmen who are in pretrial detention by court order.

Source: EFE