QUITO: The brazen shooting of a leading presidential candidate in Ecuador has boosted contenders advocating a harsher stance towards criminals in a country battling the ravages of organized crime.
Ecuador will hold a snap election on Sunday, called by President Guillermo Lasso after he dissolved the opposition-dominated Congress in May to avoid an impeachment trial.
Security was already the focus of the vote, as the once-peaceful nation has become a hub for the global drug trade, sparking brutal violence between gangs.
However, the gunning down of one of the presidential frontrunners, the journalist Fernando Villavicencio, as he left a campaign event in the capital last week, could impact the outcome of the vote, analysts say.
“The problem of insecurity and organized crime that Ecuador is going through was already the main concern for the majority of the population,“ said Paolo Moncagatta, dean of the social sciences department at the University of San Francisco in Quito.
He said the murder would “strengthen the candidates with a hardline stance.”
According to opinion polls carried out before his death, Villavicencio was in second place.
Leading the polls was Luisa Gonzalez, a 45-year-old lawyer close to leftist former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
Correa was sentenced to eight years in jail after an investigation by Villavicencio into corruption, and fled to Belgium where he has been living in exile for six years.
With the election just days away, further opinion polls are banned, however Gonzalez told AFP internal polls showed she had lost support.
'We would have won'
Without providing evidence, supporters of Villavicencio have accused the former president of having a hand in the murder, some shouting “Correa, murderer!” during the funeral.
Authorities announced the arrest of six Colombians, and the death of another at the scene, but it is not known who was the mastermind of the hit.
Academic Saudia Levoyer said that, either way, “Correa’s image had been damaged.”
Correa himself complained, denying his party would be “stupid enough” to order the murder, in comments to Colombian newscast Noticias Caracol.
“Normally we would have won in the first round, but the murder of Fernando Villavicencio shifted the electoral leaderboard,“ he said.
Correa and political analysts say the candidate who has seen the biggest boost to his popularity is the 40-year-old right-wing businessman Jan Topic.
Nicknamed “Rambo,“ the former paratrooper and sniper with the French Foreign Legion has vowed to wipe out criminal gangs and build more prisons, emulating El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele.
He was hailed as one of the victors of the only televised election debate between seven contenders on Sunday, during which he said the key to combating crime in the country was “equipping and training” security forces and boosting intelligence to track “dirty money from drug dealers and the corrupt.”
“He was the great beneficiary,“ said political scientist Santiago Basabe, from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Quito.
One candidate, Daniel Noboa, wore a bulletproof vest to the debate, while others proposed militarizing ports and other entry points, or blocking the entry of foreigners with criminal records.
'Think twice’
Other leading candidates heading into the election are right-wing former vice-president Otto Sonnenholzner, and leftist Indigenous attorney Yaku Perez.
“Obviously there was a percentage of undecided voters who were thinking of voting” for Gonzalez, but “Villavicencio’s death ... has made them think twice,“ said Basabe.
On Monday, another local politician was shot dead at a campaign rally in the province of Esmeraldas on the border with Colombia.
“People are tired of so much violence ... kidnappings, assassinations were not common crimes in Ecuador,“ said Levoyer.
In 2022, the murder rate almost doubled compared to the previous year to 26 per 100,000, a figure experts say will increase to 40 this year. - AFP
