The party said discussions had been held recently about whether to suspend campaigning due to political violence, including the July murder of the mayor of Manta. Villavicencio’s party Movimiento Construye said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that armed men attacked its Quito offices in a separate incident. According to opinion polls, his support was at 7.5 per cent, ranking him fifth out of eight candidates.
Villavicencio had pledged to combat corruption and reduce tax evasion if elected. Security concerns, along with employment and migration, are major voter concerns in presidential contests. Lasso’s government has blamed rising violence on the streets and in prisons on criminal infighting to control trafficking routes used by Mexican cartels, the Albanian mafia, and others to move drugs. The office later said it had arrested six people so far in connection with the crime during raids in Quito. The violence injured nine other people, including a candidate for the legislature and two police officers. The attorney general’s office said one suspect in the crime later died of injuries sustained in a shoot-out. Voting for a new president will go ahead as planned on Aug 20, he added. Lasso declared three days of mourning and a national state of emergency, saying the military would mobilise to guarantee security. “This is a political crime, which has the character of terrorism, and we do not doubt that this murder is an attempt to sabotage the electoral process,” Lasso said in a video statement past midnight local time, after meeting with security and electoral officials. Ecuador’s police and Interior Ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the details of the killing, but outgoing President Guillermo Lasso confirmed police safely detonated a grenade left behind by the killers.
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