The Irish Times view on the assassination of a presidential candidate in Ecuador: further evidence of a descent into chaos

The assassination in the midst of an election campaign of candidate, former journalist and anti-corruption activist Fernando Villavicencio (59) marks a new low in Ecuador’s descent into chaos.

Villavicencio, who was polling in the middle of a field of eight candidates just days ahead of the first round of the presidential elections, was shot outside a school in Quito after speaking to young supporters. A suspect was killed in the shoot-out that followed, with nine others wounded.

The killing is a major blow to a country that has seen narco-trafficking gang violence blight the economic success that between 2005 and 2015 raised millions of people from poverty on the back of an oil boom. Its profits were poured into education, healthcare and social programmes.

But foreign drug mafias, local prison and street gangs, have set off a wave of violence unlike anything in the country’s history. Homicide rates are at record levels, quadrupling in the past five years. Last year alone, 4,800 murders were reported in the country of 18 million people.

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The snap election had been prompted by attempts in the legislature to impeach President Guillermo Lasso for corruption, a move opposed by Villavicencio. He had been particularly associated with writing about graft as a political journalist during the earlier term of leftist president Rafael Correa, whose supporters are predicted to win this election.

At the time Villavicencio, previously a trade union leader in the country’s national oil company Petroecuador, faced legal persecution and death threats, and briefly sought political asylum in Peru. In 2017 he successfully ran for a seat in the national assembly, where he served until its recent dissolution by Lasso. Just days ago he had said on national television that he had received several death threats from the leader of a notorious gang.

Lasso has declared a state of emergency – not for the first time – and six arrests have been made in connection with the killing. But Ecuador is fast becoming an ungovernable narco-state.