Christian Zurita is announced as a candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador, replacing Fernando Villavicencio, who was assassinated last Wednesday. This occurs less than 24 hours after the Construye movement announced that the initial presidential formula, Andrea González Náder, would take up the challenge. The change is given so that the electoral bodies do not have qualms with the designation, after the CNE did not respond to the petitions.
First modification:
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Andrea González Náder, who had been the vice president since the electoral contest began, had initially been designated as the candidate for the presidency by the Construyamos movement, after the assassination of candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
However, fearing that the National Electoral Council (CNE) would not accept her candidacy, because she was already nominated for the Vice Presidency, this Sunday, August 13, the movement appointed Christian Zurita, a journalist who accompanied Villavicencio in his investigations. about corruption.
The Ecuadorian journalist, who worked for 15 years with Villavicencio, assured that “his ideas are totally intact” and promised to defend them. “We are going to try to emulate his ability and emulate his name,” he said, while stressing that they are not going to sit down to negotiate with “any mafia.”
“Under no circumstances could we allow Fernando’s non-presence after his atrocious and vile crime to be lost,” Zurita justified, during the joint press conference to which they attended with a strong police device and bulletproof vests.
They are left out of today’s debate
The Construye movement will not participate on the night of this Sunday, August 13, in the electoral debate. They requested to leave an empty chair for Villavicencio, who was shot dead Wednesday afternoon after a rally at a school in Quito by alleged Colombian hitmen.
González Náder criticized that they cannot participate in it, which the other seven candidates will attend, and assured that “Without Fernando there is no debate, and despite the fact that the CNE does not allow us to participate in today’s debate, we know that Fernando already is the winner of that debate.”
The CNE decided to keep the elections for next Sunday, despite the assassination of one of the candidates, in a race led, according to some polls, by former assembly member Luisa González, candidate of the Citizen Revolution (RC), the movement headed by the Former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
The winner of these elections will complete the 2021-2025 period, interrupted by the invocation last May by the current president, Guillermo Lasso, of the constitutional mechanism of “cross death”, with which he dissolved the National Assembly (Parliament), of opposition majority, at the time he was preparing to vote for his removal. Thus, he forced this call for extraordinary elections, which at the same time implied a reduction in his mandate, although he does not intend to complete it until 2025, since the current head of state is not running for re-election.
News in development…
with EFE
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