QUITO (AFP) – Ecuadorans vote for a new president in the midst of a bloody drug war and a rash of political assassinations that cut short the bid of a popular candidate.
The remaining finalists – lawyer Luisa Gonzalez, 45, and banana empire heir Daniel Noboa, 35 – campaigned in bullet-proof vests as a climate of fear grips the once-peaceful country.
Both have vowed to prioritise the escalating violence.
The main concern of Ecuadorans, according to recent polls, is crime and insecurity in a country where the murder rate has quadrupled in the four years to 2022. Some 54,000 police were deployed to keep the vote safe.
Long a haven between major cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, violence in the South American nation has exploded in recent years as enemy gangs with links to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.
Some 3,600 Ecuadorans have been murdered so far this year, according to the Ecuadoran Organized Crime Observatory, including nearly a dozen politicians.
In August, the violence claimed the life of anti-graft and anti-cartel journalist and presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, mowed down in a barrage of submachine gun fire after a campaign speech.
He had been polling in second place.
A state of emergency was declared after Villavicencio’s assassination, and Noboa and Gonzalez both campaigned with heavy security details.
Reporters following them have also had to don protective jackets and helmets and travel in armoured vehicles. Many have received death threats.
Seven suspects in Villavicencio’s assassination were killed in prison.
Whoever wins will be elected to only 16 months in office – completing the term of incumbent Guillermo Lasso who called a snap vote to avoid possible impeachment for alleged embezzlement.
They will be allowed to run again for the 2025-29 presidential term, and the one after that.
Both relative unknowns, a win for either candidate would make history: Gonzalez becoming Ecuador’s first woman president, or Noboa its youngest.
