A politician in Ecuador was Monday killed. The party officials said, less than a week after a presidential front-runner was short to dead at a campaign rally which was held ahead of this weekend’s elections.
Pedro Briones is a member of the Citizen Revolution Party of former president Rafael Correa, and one of the prominent leaders in the province of Esmeraldas on the border with Colombia. According to reports, he was killed by unknown gunmen.
“My solidarity with the family of comrade Pedro Briones, new victim of violence,” Luisa Gonzalez, one of the main presidential candidates, said on X (Twitter).
“Ecuador is going through its bloodiest period,” said Gonzalez, a close former associate of Correa. In her expression, she asserted that the government lacks governance skills and that the country has been overthrown by gangs and crime perpetrators.
Correa also added his condolences on social media which reads: “They murdered another of our colleagues in Esmeraldas. Enough is enough!”
According to reports, neither the police nor the government immediately confirmed the attack but an Ecuadoran media, citing a local police source, said Pedro Briones was shot at his residential address in the town of San Mateo by two men on a motorcycle who escaped the scene.
The murder of Pedro Briones came in less than a week after the August 9 killing, in the capital Quito, of one of the presidential centrist Fernando Villavicencio.
The 59-year-old journalist was on a crusade against corruption and was in second place in the polls when he was shot as he left a campaign rally.
One of his main feats as a journalist was to have put the former president Correa, who served from 2007-2017, in the dock thanks to one of his investigations.
Correa, now living in Belgium, was sentenced in absentia to eight years in the case.
Most of Ecuador has been under a state of emergency and President Guillermo Lasso has blamed organized crime for the killing of Villavicencio.
Six Colombians were arrested as part of the probe into the assassination and one was killed shortly after the attack by the candidate’s bodyguards.
(AFP)
0 Comments