Candidates vying to be Ecuador’s next president are holding their final campaign events ahead of a presidential vote marred by the murder of anti-corruption candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
More than 13 million Ecuadorians are eligible to head to polls on Sunday when the presidency and seats in the National Assembly are up for grabs.
The snap elections were prompted by an unusual move from conservative President Guillermo Lasso, who became the first Ecuadorian leader to invoke “muerte cruzada”, a constitutional measure that allowed him to dissolve the legislature and bring his term to an end.
Lasso had been facing an impeachment proceeding, which he dismissed as politically motivated. But in the wake of his decision, candidates have stepped forward to replace him, pledging to fight crime and bolster the struggling economy.
Critics have blamed the sharply rising violence on drug traffickers and Ecuador’s unemployment woes. And the country’s recent insecurity was on display last week, when Villavicencio, a former investigative journalist and lawmaker, was gunned down while leaving a campaign event.
“The new government must be more [decisive] and courageous,” Milton Oleas, a 67-year-old undecided voter, told the Reuters news agency. “The president cannot doubt what they do and must be valiant in taking decisions.”
Article from www.aljazeera.com