The Construye movement decided on Sunday to name Christian Zurita as a candidate for the presidency of Ecuador, replacing Fernando Villavicencio, assassinated last Wednesday, after the appointment of the vice-presidential candidate Andrea González did not prosper in the electoral bodies.
On Saturday, the party decided to name González, but fearing that the National Electoral Council (CNE) would not accept her candidacy, since she was running for vice presidency, yesterday it decided to name Zurita, a journalist who accompanied Villavicencio in his investigations. about corruption.
"Under no circumstances could we allow Fernando's non-presence after his atrocious and vile crime to be lost," Zurita justified, at a press conference that they attended with a strong police force and bulletproof vests.
The journalist, who worked for 15 years with Villavicencio, assured that "his ideas are fully intact" and promised to defend them: "We will try to emulate his capacity and emulate his name."
The Construye movement did not participate last night in the electoral debate, where they asked to leave an empty chair for Villavicencio, who was shot dead on Wednesday at the exit of a rally in Quito by alleged Colombian hitmen.
The CNE decided to hold the elections on August 20, despite the assassination of one of the candidates, in a race led, according to some polls, by former Assemblywoman Luisa González, from the Citizen Revolution (RC), the movement of former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
The winners 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), opposition majority, at the time he was preparing to vote for his dismissal.
