The last time Christian Zurita saw Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio alive, he was “happy” among his supporters in Quito.
Then he heard the bullets, threw himself down like everyone else and saw a lot of blood. His best friend is dead, shot three times in the head by Colombian hitmen.
A week before the first round of Sunday’s presidential election in Ecuador, Mr. Zurita has been nominated to replace his murdered friend.
He was Villavicencio’s faithful squire. Eight years of complicity and journalistic investigations. Together, they exposed countless cases of corruption, withstood legal attacks, pressures and threats from politicians and criminals furious with their work.
Always wearing a bulletproof vest in public, his calm gaze hidden behind large glasses, Mr. Zurita, caught up in the whirlwind of the campaign, hardly had time to return to the moment of the death of Mr Villavicencio.
“It was indescribable,” he said in an interview with AFP. For a long moment, he is silent to prevent the tears from flowing and limits himself to one sentence: “He was my friend”.
Mr. Zurita speaks to AFP in his office in the Ecuadorian capital, the same one used by the candidate Villavicencio who dreamed of removing the mafias from power. In front of the desk, a suit of the murdered presidential hopeful still lies there.
The perpetrators of the crime have not been identified. The opponents of the duo are numerous, and the threats have succeeded in recent months, as Villavicencio climbed in the polls.
Through their masterful investigation, the journalists revealed how the former socialist president Rafael Correa (2007-2017), now in exile, and former officials of his government concluded pacts of financial support with men of business for his presidential campaign, in exchange for the awarding of state contracts.
The book with all the evidence was dubbed “Arroz Verde” (green rice), the code used by lobbyists to strike bribe deals. On Sunday, Mr. Zurita will face at the polls the heiress of the ex-president and until recently favorite in the polls, Luisa Gonzalez, an apologist for Correism which he considers for his part as a “political mafia”.
Excerpts from the interview:
Question: What did Fernando Villavicencio mean to you?
Answer: “He was a great complement, we had a huge ability to work together and build very powerful things from information. We were the perfect formula for building huge cases”.
Q: Did you hesitate to succeed him for the elections?
A: “The relay is an ethical necessity, the relay is to say: We are not going to let your name disappear (…) it means Listen, I will do my best to honor your word, your conscience, your thoughts, your ethics, your moral stature”.
Q: What do you remember at the time of the assassination?
A: “I was about five meters away (…) when I started to hear the shots, I didn’t think they were bullets, but afterwards (…) I understood that the worst was happening. Lowered to the ground, I saw a lot of blood”.
Q: Who wanted to silence Fernando Villavicencio?
A: “Those who were afraid of him, those who knew he was a threat silenced him, and if they silenced him, it was because he had a huge chance of winning” .
Q: Do you think those who murdered him want to come after you?
A: “It’s not just a threat, they killed the candidate, they came for us. I am now a candidate and I represent the same”.
Q: How do you feel about always having to wear a body armor?
A: “It’s a bit embarrassing, but I assume”.
Q: Are you risking your life to make your friend’s dream come true?
A: “The important thing is that I took up a challenge that I had not foreseen, that I do it and that I do it with dignity (…) The important thing is precisely ( to take advantage) of the enormous possibilities of confronting the negative. Because there is real hope, because if we don’t, we open the door to fear and impunity”.
Q: How does it feel to go from investigative journalist to presidential candidate overnight?
A: “It was totally new for me (…) because until a week ago I was a pure journalist, I was intimidated by the world and I understood it from the point of view of the free capacity of journalism (…) (now) it is strange to see how (the supporters) shout Fernando the brave, Zurita president “.
08/19/2023 10:45:24 – Quito (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
