With just 12 days before voting begins for the presidential election in Ecuador, outspoken presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, has been assassinated.
According to reports, he was felled on Wednesday evening at a political rally in the capital.
The people of Ecuador have expressed pessimism ahead of upcoming presidential elections that has been dominated by drug-related violence.
However, the assassination of Villavicencio is coming less than a month after the Mayor of Manta, was brutally shot during a public appearance.
The presidential candidate was reportedly shot in the head, according to Carlos Figueroa, an associate of Villavicencio, who was at the rally.
“When he stepped outside the door, he was met with gunfire, there was nothing to be done because they were shots to the head.”
Guillermo Alberto Santiago Lasso Mendoza, the 47thPresident of Ecuador, reacting to the unfortunate incident, took to his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, and said: “Outrage and shocked by the assassination” he also blamed the death on “Organized crime”.
In a televised broadcast monitored by Persecondnews on Thursday, he said “this an attempt to sabotage the upcoming election …this was a political crime, terrorism, it is no coincidence this happened days before the first round of voting.”
He also declared a 60-day nationwide state of emergency, and also the deployment of securities forces across the country to curb soaring violence.
Persecondnews gathered that the South American country recorded its highest homicide rate in decades in 2022, according to a police report on violence.
Ecuador registered 4,539 homicide victims up from 2,048 recorded in the previous year.
The insecurity in the country has resulted in around 30 candidates, including six of the presidential candidates, who are under strict police protection.
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