2023-08-21 00:33:36
Ecuador ended this Sunday a tense electoral day to designate a president and congressmen in the midst of a large deployment of the military for the recent assassination of a presidential candidate and the violence of drug gangs.
The electoral authority has until September 23 to give the definitive results of elections marked by an unprecedented security scheme for the candidates, who voted with bulletproof vests and helmets in the midst of a state of emergency.
The assassination on August 9 of the candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who was second in the polls, opens the unknown about the result. Everything indicates that neither will have enough margin to avoid the ballot on October 15.
“The most serious problem is insecurity (…) so much crime, murders, disappearances, we are scared,” Eva Hurtado, 40, told AFP as she lined up to vote in the north of the capital.
The once peaceful South American country has in recent years become a center of operations for foreign and local drug cartels that impose a regime of terror with killings, kidnappings and extortion.
Added to the violence is an institutional crisis that has kept the country without Congress for three months, when the unpopular President Guillermo Lasso (right) decided to dissolve it and call early elections to avoid impeachment in a political trial for corruption.
At the close of the elections, the electoral authority registered a participation of 82% of the 13.4 million Ecuadorians who had to exercise the compulsory vote in a country of 18.3 million inhabitants. Abroad there were “difficulties” to pay electronically, according to authorities.
A prior unofficial count is expected to start around 7:00 p.m. local time (00:00 GMT) and allow Lasso’s successor to be profiled.
Ecuador voted “with three feelings: fear of insecurity (…), pessimism regarding the economic situation and distrust of the political class,” explained Santiago Cahuasquí, a political scientist at the SEK International University in an interview with AFP.
The face of the late Villavicencio, a former centrist journalist, was on the ballot papers along with seven other candidates, as they were already printed when he was shot by a Colombian hit man.
He is replaced in the candidacy by journalist Christian Zurita, his best friend and partner in investigations that exposed major corruption scandals. One of them led to the sentence of former socialist president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) to eight years in prison.
Threatened with death the day before, Zurita, 53, voted wearing a helmet and a bulletproof vest in Quito, surrounded by an impressive array of bodyguards armed with rifles.
“These are difficult and dark moments for the country,” he said after voting.
At the antipodes, the presidency is disputed by Luisa González, 45, Correa’s dolphin and the only female candidate. Although Ecuador is banned for the publication of surveys, González is the favorite.
But the assassination could generate an unexpected result, since it “exacerbated the anti-correista sentiment” represented by the deceased candidate, Cahuasquí points out.
Before the murder, a poll showed Villavicencio behind González and then former sniper and former paratrooper Jan Topic (right), indigenous leader Yaku Pérez (left) and former vice president Otto Sonnenholzner (right).
After Villavicencio’s murder, a new poll showed González still in front and Topic in second place.
Ecuador lowered the curtain on a short campaign marred by political violence in which a mayor, a candidate for deputy and a local correísmo leader were also assassinated.
In the midst of the violence, the figure of Topic (40) emerged, supported by a sector that calls for a strong hand against criminal gangs.
Dubbed the “Ecuadorian Bukele,” this former member of the French Foreign Legion plans to open more prisons in the style of the Salvadoran president.
“First things first: security!” He cried when voting.
Gangs linked to Mexican and Colombian cartels clash over the drug business and use prisons as their operations center, where bloody massacres have occurred that have left 430 inmates dead since 2021.
Last year Ecuador reached a record of 26 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, almost double that of 2021.
Poverty reaches 27% of the population in a dollarized economy, and a quarter of Ecuadorians have informal work or are unemployed.
A historic referendum to stop the exploitation of crude oil in a part of the Yasuní Amazon national park was also voted on Sunday, as the world seeks to reduce fossil fuels and mitigate global warming.
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