A local leader related to former president Rafael Correa and now presidential candidate Luisa González was assassinated this Monday in Ecuador, five days after the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. «Ecuador lives its bloodiest time. We owe this to the total abandonment of an inept government and to a State taken over by the mafias”, lamented González.
Briones was a local leader in the rural sector of San Mateo, in the troubled coastal province of Esmeraldas (northwest and bordering Colombia), for the Citizen Revolution movement. ‘El Universo’, the country’s main newspaper, reported, citing police sources, that two gunmen on motorcycles came to his home, in the San Mateo park, and shot him.
The Government of Colombia, headed by the leftist Gustavo Petro, expressed its sorrow for the crime of Briones after six of his compatriots were arrested and another was killed for the assassination of Villavicencio on August 9, when he was leaving a political rally. in Quito.
Corruption allegations
Bogotá “again expresses its solidarity with the Ecuadorian people, its leadership and the political groups that fight for democracy in the sister country of Ecuador. The Government rejects these criminal acts against Ecuadorian democracy and trusts that those responsible will be punished to the fullest extent of the law,” he added.
The Petro government, however, did not speak out after the assassination of the centrist Villavicencio. A week earlier, the former investigative journalist, whose corruption allegations led to an eight-year prison sentence for Correa, said he had been threatened with death by the detained leader of “Los Choneros,” the main criminal gang in Ecuador and an ally of the Mexican cartel from Sinaloa.
Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso blamed the assassination of the organized crime candidate, although authorities have not determined who ordered his death. In the middle of the campaign for the elections this Sunday, a mayor and a candidate for deputy were previously assassinated.
On the way to the local elections last February, two aspiring mayors were also murdered. Criminal organizations with ties to drug trafficking are waging a war for power in Ecuador.
Ecuador, located between Colombia and Peru – the world’s main cocaine producers – has seized more than 530 tons of drugs since 2021, the year in which seizures reached a record 210 tons.
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