Ecuadorians put aside fears of leaving their homes amid unprecedented violence and voted for a new president Sunday in a special election that was heavily guarded by police and soldiers in part due to the assassination of a presidential candidate this month.
Front-runners included an ally of exiled former President Rafael Correa and a millionaire with a security background promising to be tough on crime.
Ecuadorians were already struggling to make sense of the violent crime their once calm South American country has experienced over the last three years when presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated Aug. 9 as he left a campaign rally in Quito, the capital. His killing heightened people's fears of spending time anywhere other than their homes and becoming victims of robberies, kidnappings, extortions, homicides or any of the other crimes that have become commonplace.
The election was called after President Guillermo Lasso, a conservative former banker, dissolved the National Assembly by decree in May to avoid being impeached over allegations that he failed to intervene to end a faulty contract between the state-owned oil transport company and a private tanker company. He decided not to run in the special election.
Presidential candidate Luisa González, of the Citizen's Revolution Political Movement, waves upon her arrival to a polling station in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Sunday, Aug. 20, 2023. The election was called after President Guillermo Lasso dissolved the National Assembly by decree in May to avoid being impeached.
Voters were also electing a new National Assembly and deciding two ballot measures -- one addressing whether to stop oil extraction in a portion of the Amazon jungle and the other asking whether to authorize the exploitation of minerals such as gold, silver and copper in forests of the Andean Choco around Quito.
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