Ecuadorian Armed Forces together with members of the police during an operation in Guayaquil (Ecuador) Marcos Pin (EFE)
Fear follows the candidates for mayor and prefects in Ecuador’s February 5 by-laws, the most violent the South American country has seen. Since the candidatures were registered in August 2022, there have been 12 attacks on mayoral and prefectural candidates. In one instance, they assassinated one of the candidates, Gerardo Delgado, a popular communicator profiled by former President Rafael Correa’s Citizen Revolution movement. The others were shot at, stabbed, their vehicles blown up, explosives thrown at their homes, their relatives or close associates murdered. In some cases, the attacks against someone were repeated.
Richard Firmat managed to get out alive after two people opened fire on him while he was in his vehicle following a political rally in the town of Arrecho, a rural area of Simón Bolívar canton on the Ecuadorian coast where he is located , ended running for mayor. “I do tours, I leave a triptych for people and a treasure so they can read my suggestions,” she says.
He did on January 9, driving his truck on a dirt road, when two men started shooting at him, “two bullets hit my left arm and I lost control,” says the candidate. “I simply accelerated while one of my companions took the wheel of the car and we were able to get out, although the gunmen kept firing as we drove away.”
Simón Bolívar is a canton in the province of Guayas, the most violent in the country where there are thousands of violent crimes. In 2022, 2,000 homicides were registered. In rural areas like Simón Bolívar, organized crime gangs extort people and the vast countryside is often used as a secret landing strip for drug planes. It’s a hot area with barely 30,000 people living and just over 20,000 voting.
The candidate’s other three companions were unharmed and helped him tourniquet the campaign shirt because the bullet had hit an artery. “I don’t know who doesn’t want me in the race, but I filed a complaint to get the police to investigate,” says Firmat. So far there are no detainees, nor has he received police custody.
This is the latest attack in a violent partial election and the shadow of drug traffickers’ interference in Ecuadorian politics. President Guillermo Lasso has assured that “there are candidates who have been dismissed as advisors to congregation members for alleged links to drug trafficking” and offered to make the evidence “found through intelligence operations” public, but that was a month ago and the evidence was not revealed.
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For example, if the evidence is presented, the National Electoral Council cannot control where funds come from to fund high-profile campaigns, says top authority Diana Atamaint. “It’s a post-election audit, once the campaign accounts and receipts are in we do an analysis and if the numbers aren’t right we report it to the prosecutor,” he explains.
In this scenario, the February 5 elections will elect 5,567 agencies in Ecuador amid uncertainty that violence could escalate to constituencies or even attack the facilities where the data centers will be located. You will receive the information from the voting logs. According to the National Electoral Council, a security protocol is being finalized to respond to the current violent context that could disrupt the electoral process, something Ecuadorians have never experienced before.
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