Noboa thanks “broad support” in referendum on measures against crime in Ecuador

The president of EcuadorDaniel Noboa, thanked this Monday for the “wide support” to the measures to strengthen the fight against organized crime, approved by a large majority in the referendum held on Sunday.

In a message through social networks, Noboa valued the support received for the nine questions on measures focused on security and the fight against corruption and did not mention the two economic proposals that were rejected, referring to international arbitrations regarding to investments and hourly contracts.

“We are experiencing difficult situations, but I am certain that we are going in the right direction. Ecuador has spoken, our next step will be to continue working even harder than yesterday“, he stated Noboa.

Among the nine issues approved there are three that involve amendments to the Constitution and whose entry into force will be immediate once the official results are announced.

These are the permanent support of the Armed Forces to the Police in operations against organized crime, the extraditions of Ecuadorians required by the Justice of other countries and the establishment of a constitutional court system.

Through parliamentary means, laws must be passed so that the Armed Forces control access to prisons, considered the epicenter of the violence crisis that has made Ecuador among the first countries with the most homicides in Latin America, with one 45 percent. every 100,000 inhabitants.

In the same way, it must process initiatives to increase penalties for crimes of terrorism and its financing, drug production and trafficking, murder, hitmen, human trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, arms trafficking, money laundering and illegal mining, as well as that of eliminating prison benefits for several of these crimes, so that the sentence must be served entirely in prison.

The same will happen with the proposals to create a specific crime of possession and carrying of weapons for the exclusive use of the Police and Armed Forces, to equip these state forces with weapons seized from crime and to generate an express mechanism for the expropriation of property. illicit origin.

The plebiscite had the participation of 72% of the more than 13.6 million Ecuadorians summoned to the polls, and was marked by the murder of the director of the El Rodeo prison, in the city of Portoviejo, and the beginning of a mutiny in the Quevedo prison, which left at least four injured.

The week before the vote was also marked by the murders of two mayors of towns where there are illegal mining activities, and a severe energy crisis that has forced the Government to make blackouts of up to eight hours a day to ration the supply of electricity. electricity.