Backing down in Fernando Villavicencio’s alliance after 24 hours of strong controversy. It will be another investigative journalist, Christian Zurita, and not the vice-presidential candidate, Andrea González, who will replace the leader assassinated by hitmen at the head of the Construye Movement and the Gente Buena citizen group.
Construye’s previous decision to impose González as head of the alliance’s list had not only caused strong internal discomfort in Gente Buena. There were also legal doubts about the electoral sorpasso, since the law imposes that a person can be replaced on the ballot days before the elections, but without changing the “dignity of popular election.” In other words, without jumping from one position to another on the electoral ticket.
“We are going to fulfill what he dreamed of, having a country with memory and without impunity. Revenge against the mafias will be to vote for Fernando,” Zurita declared after being presented as Construye’s new candidate. In Ecuador, a candidate cannot run for president if he does not have the sponsorship of one of the political parties recognized by the National Electoral Council (CNE), Villavicencio agreed with Construye, a centrist movement led by María Paula Romo, who was a former minister of Government (a role similar to that of Prime Minister) of President Lenín Moreno.
But in the last hours sparks flew between Construye and leaders of Gente Buena, the group of citizens commanded by Villavicencio, especially its vice president, Captain Edwin Ortega, and Villavicencio’s widow, Vero Sarauz, who did not accept the bet for González. “I am going to honor his memory,” said Zurita, a respected journalist who shared some of the most shocking investigations with Villavicencio.
“They killed my friend,” he wrote on social networks a few minutes after the attack. The journalist was very close to him, that night he had planned to meet with his partner. Everyone in the union knew how close he was, which led them to found investigative media and share their information on corruption in the citizen revolution.
“He was my corduroy, my brother, my team. We were the best forward,” he declared with great difficulty to the Mexican newspaper Excelsior after certifying Villavicencio’s death. Zurita confirmed that the anti-corruption journalist was hit by getting into his truck. “Security made a mistake, they shoot through the opposite window and hit him like that. There was a clinic less than 60 meters away,” he added.
“He was not afraid, he was never afraid. He was a daredevil. If we have been successful, it is because we were never afraid. When he said about the vest (he refused to put on the bulletproof vest), we believed him because he said that he was not afraid of the death,” added the new candidate.
In principle, the precipitation of events prevented Zurita from participating this past dawn in the only debate between candidates scheduled for this first electoral round. The impact of Villavicencio’s assassination is of such a caliber that analysts and experts disagree when it comes to detailing the new political scenario, marked by uncertainty.
Who has not taken a step back in her complaints in Sarauz, who has accused the Government for the errors in the security device that protected her husband, but does not believe in a conspiracy from the State: “The government of Guillermo Lasso is weak and it has many shortcomings, but it does not occur to me to say that it is a murderer”.
Instead, the widow has insisted on pointing to the citizen revolution of Rafael Correa, sentenced to eight years of corruption thanks to Villavicencio’s investigations. “I am going to say it very clearly: Correísmo has ties to the narco-criminal gangs in this country, they have taken over entire provinces,” Sarauz said on Saturday in an interview with the Colombian station Blu Radio.