Fernando Villavicencio, who was running for president of Ecuador on an anti-corruption was assassinated in broad daylight on August 9th. Who stands to benefit from the assassination, and what does this mean for the upcoming August 20th presidential election? Joe Emersberger, a long-time analyst of Ecuadoran politics, discusses the situation.
Transcript
Greg Wilpert
Welcome to The World on Fire. I’m your host, Greg Wilpert. A prominent candidate for the presidency of Ecuador, Fernando Villavicencio, was assassinated on Wednesday, August ninth, just as he was leaving a campaign rally. The assassination shocked Ecuador, which has already been reeling from sky high crime rates and the assassination of the mayor of the Ecuadorian town of Mante just a month ago. On Thursday, government representatives stated that eight Colombians had been arrested for organizing the assassination, and that the person who shot Villavicencio was killed in the shootout following the assassination. The government further stated that the suspects had ties with organized crime in Ecuador. Ecuador is in the midst of a presidential campaign to complete the term of President Guillermo Lasso, who dissolved the legislature shortly before he was scheduled to be impeached on corruption charges. The move also triggered a new presidential election in which Lasso is not running for re-election. Joining me now to discuss the latest developments in Ecuador is Joe Emersberger. Joe is a Canadian engineer with Ecuadorian roots, who has often written for FAIR and Znet, among other publications, and also has a new Substack page. Thanks, Joe, for joining me today.
Joe Emersberger
Thank you for inviting me.
Greg Wilpert
So let’s start with Fernando Villavicencio. Who was he and whose interests in politics did he represent and what was his presidential campaign about?
Joe Emersberger
Okay, he’s a long time… He’s a right-wing candidate. He’s a long-time enemy of Correa’s government, which was a left-wing government in power from 2007 to 2017. He was briefly… He always had a little bit of officially a flirtation with left-ish movements like he was a former trade union person, and he was apparently one of the founders of the political wing of Kanae, the indigenous movement’s political wing, which is called Pachacutik. That party has always been to the right of Kanae. For whatever reason, they’ve always been a disconnect between Kanae’s discourse and Pachakutik. In office, their politicians have always swung to the right. Mio Vassensio was involved with that. Recently, he also tried to… He became what? He got elected to Congress in 2021. He was basically allied with Guillermo Lasso, the right-wing President. Now, in fact, he tried, he made maneuver to try to obstruct the impeachment of Lasso, which was underway shortly before the elections were called. So he’s basically a right-wing actor, although he’s flirted with leftist rhetoric and organization in the past. And he’s also… His other claim to fame is that he was briefly an author of a hit piece that The Guardian put out against about Assange, Julian Assange, claiming that he had met with Paul Maniford, Trump’s campaign manager, that he had met with him in the Ecuador embassy, which was an absolutely outrageous story.
The guardian ended up just peppering it with a weasel-words, editing it after the fact to protect themselves from lawsuits. He was briefly noted as a… His name appeared on the byline of that article for a while, and then he was removed. That was before he got into politics again. He was declared himself a journalist, and he was actually convicted under Ecuadorian law. Libel is a criminal offense. So while Correa was in office, he actually got convicted of libel because he and a few other guys, well, they pretty much they did outrageously liable Correa. They made some outrageous allegations saying that Correa had ordered police to shoot on a hospital. It was outrageous, and he was convicted for that. That became another reason he became got some attention internationally because people rallied behind the they objected to the fact that libel was part of the criminal code in Ecuador. So that gained him some notoriety. So his assassination is… He was polling like fourth or fifth, very low. He was not a threat to do very well in the election. The election actually, according to the average of the latest polls before this incident, who knows how this will affect things, but it looked like Luisa Gonzáles, the Koreanist candidate, was poised to, based on an average of polls, very close to winning outright in the first round.
We’ll see what happens, how the vote actually takes place now. With his assassination, Lasso was immediately announced a 60-day state of exception. That’s of concern to me because although they said, Yeah, no way the elections are going forward, but then how are they going to take advantage of these, of the state of exception to perhaps suppress the vote in certain areas where they think Korea has a large number of supporters? What extra? How could they use these extra powers to tamper with the electoral process? That’s a concern I have.
Greg Wilpert
Yeah, that’s what I want to get into next. Basically, whose interests do you think V of Essential’s assassination serves? I mean, surely there are those who would like to pin the assassination on the Correa movement, or on Korea himself, I imagine, because of the animosity that existed between V of Essential and Korea. I also find it interesting that there’s of maybe a bit of a tangent, but I just saw an article that I think it might have been The New York Times, that claimed that V of Essential was charged for insulting the President, not liable, as you point out. So that’s a huge difference. But anyway, there was a pretty big animosity in any case, and he was, as you said, in prison briefly. I mean, who do you think might have been behind it, and whose interest does this assassination serve?
Joe Emersberger
Well, I think it’s… One thing to mention is that the people in charge of the other center of security is the government, the last government. He was one of the candidates who had protection provided by the government. As a presidential candidate, they’re common sense, they get official protection from the government. They were just horrendous error. His own family has just been absolutely, as you can imagine, live it, denouncing Laszlo’s government. These errors in the security and the handling of his security were just inexcusable and multiple. Were they let him left the building, the fact that the car wasn’t bulletproof, all sorts of just basic errors in security and the families just livid, they wouldn’t let him see the body right away. They were denouncing that. The family’s been pointing the finger directly at Lasso, and he’s responsible for the security. There’s already immediately, as soon as this happens, you see right-wing actors, including even my own family of people who support the right, are immediately calling for a military government. Those of reflexive forces are unleashed by something like this. There’s no advantage for Korea. First of all, they’re not in power.
They don’t have control. Nobody has control of the police, apparently. It’s just a total free for all right now. Violence crime has gone up quadrupled since 2017, when the right-wing basically took power with their Trojan horse, Morenoid. But it’s been just a catastrophe. So, I mean, who benefits? I mean, the chaos really tends to empower those forces who want to use this as a pretext to seize power. It’s what Laszlo already tried to do with his referendum. He wanted to roll back. He wanted to… You want to try to have a referendum in February that was focused on crime. So the typical solutions the right-wing proposed, they created this problem of violent crime, and then their solutions are like give people guns, let the government extradite people. That seems to be the direction that the right is trying to take this, and trying to blame Correa, I mean, it’s outrageous, but they’ve made outrageous allegations against him before. They’ll feed that discourse will be out there. But for me, honestly, it’s hard to say. What my concern is that, like I said, my concern is that the powers that they’ve given themselves now, with the state of exception, I worry what they could try to pull with that in terms of voter suppression or that maneuver.
That’s my concern. Like I said, Vivek Senshi was a minor candidate, so if anything, his votes will probably get transferred to other right-wing candidates.
Greg Wilpert
Actually, that would probably benefit the right then. But one of the main issues, as you mentioned, is the skyrocketing crime rate, specifically the homicide rate. You wrote about this actually last February for an article in Mint Press, how the international media keeps focusing on this issue, and it’s been related also, I’ve seen to the assassination, somehow that because of these high crime rate, that has something to do with the Vicencio’s assassination. But talk a little bit about that record that is, you just mentioned that crime was actually lowered during Correa, and why has it become such an issue, and just how serious is it at the moment?
Joe Emersberger
Yeah, it’s an absolute catastrophe. When Korea left office, Ecuador was basically about the second most safe country in Latin America, where it was hit a homicide rate of under 5.8, something like that, deaths per homicides per 100,000 people, which is about the level of the US in Canada, more or less. Now it’s important because this all gets stored in the media. They always say Ecuador was once safe. That’s very misleading. In the late ’70s, early ’80s, yeah, it was very safe, but that you’re talking 40 years ago. Then from 1980 all the way right through to 2011, to early years of Korea’s presidency, the homicide raised constantly on an upswing. By the time Korea, it was maybe about five, six in 1980, but by 2011, it had reached like 17, 18. Then under Korea’s 10 years in office, it had gone all the way back down to under, say, about 5.8, under six. So reduction of like two-thirds, a massive reduction. That’s unprecedented. The whole trajectory over those decades was upward. It was an upward trajectory in the homicide rate. Correa had this remarkable achievement of bringing it down by two-thirds, and he did it without all the things that the right-wing always wants to suggest, without mass incarceration, without guns proliferating all over the…
Without the death penalty, all the things that the right-wing people like to propose as solutions. He achieved that. Then as soon as Moreno took over and betrayed his movement that got him elected became basically a right-wing government, immediately you see that the upward trend in homicide starts very, very soon. Pretty much in 2018, 2019, you already see an alarming upward trend, but then under Lasso, it’s just gone through the roof. Now, like I mentioned, if it was like ’17 or ’18 in around 2011, in the early years of Correa’s office, when it peaked after a steady climb from 1980, by 2021, ’22, ’23, now we’re up way beyond that. Now we’re up 25, 26. Now it’s the highest it’s been in decades, like a quadrupling of what it was since 2017. What the corporate media tends to is distorts this history because the record of the right-wing in Ecuador with homicide rate for the last 40 years has always been terrible. It’s always been an upward trend when they’re in office. They don’t have whatever… They lack the understanding, and they don’t believe in a strong state. They don’t believe in funding things properly. They believe in just letting things slide and just letting rich people try to pay for their own security.
It doesn’t even work for the rich people. It hasn’t worked for anybody. Literally nobody is safe in Ecuador. The Correas themselves have had candidates assassinated in recent months as well. It’s not something that’s just affected in any particular side of the political spectrum. It’s just a general free for all at the moment. You have gangs giving press conferences from the jails, where the jails are out of control. Some of the prison massacres are taking place because the criminals have just taken over the prison system. And Luisa Gonzáles, the Correas candidate, has been hammering at this constantly. Her point is constantly that the criminal elements in Ecuador have basically taken over the state. They’ve taken over the police, the prisons, parts even of the military, even the US, who was very pro-lasso, very supportive, there was a US government official who made accusations from the embassy that drug dealers have infiltrated the police and stuff like that. So there’s a lot of problems that are just a total catastrophe. Like I said, I guess the history tends to get distorted, because you look at the history, the right-wing has always been terrible on crime in Ecuador for the past 40 years.
Greg Wilpert
I guess related to that is certainly also the issue of corruption, which was Villavicencio’s main issue. And it’s also always been portrayed that corruption was particularly bad under Korea, with him being sentenced in absentia while he’s living in exile, basically in Belgium, and then also his vice president, Jorge Glass being imprisoned for corruption under the previous president, Lenin Moreno. Now, and so first of all, what’s the record there? I mean, as far as we can tell, of course, corruption is always more difficult to identify than homicide. But I mean, what’s your sense of what’s happening? And then, of course, Laszlo himself was also charged with corruption, and which is one of the reasons we’re having this presidential election coming up. So what’s your assessment there in terms of the record?
Joe Emersberger
Well, I mean, under Korea, there was a massive increase in public works. There were all sorts of projects for a huge improvement in the roads and schools built and hospitals and infrastructure like anti-floating infrastructure. Eight hydroelectric plants were built. There was a huge, massive, really unprecedented investment in infrastructure and public works. With that, there’s always going to be, I mean, it’s inevitable that there will be some shenanigans and things going on. Koreas have never denied that there were some instances where things happened that this guy was pilfering, this guy was doing this. But it was not at a level that actually impacted the benefits that the macroeconomic benefits that the public received. But it was inevitable as it was going to happen on some level and that that was going to be used later. It was blown up in a big show by the media, especially in the Moreno, to use that as a basis for political persecution to say, A-ha, well, that Kareya’s sentence is that he had psychic influence, like one of the things he’s accused that he had psychic influence or any lower-level official who took a bribe. I mean, if you took that accusation seriously, there isn’t a single president anywhere in the world couldn’t be sent to jail because corruption takes place, there are dirty cops, there are dirty officials under any government that ever existed.
And ever. So you could throw anybody in jail for that. That’s the approach they’ve taken. Korea actually has political asylum in Belgium. The cases against them are ridiculous. Interpol is not a leftist organization. They’ve rejected on human rights grounds, the door-to-door’s request, extra item. It’s a joke. But like I said, like any propaganda, there’s some elements of, yeah, was there corruption in the? Yeah, there was some corruption because there was such a massive investment in public works, and with that comes opportunities for some people to get in there and do some things. But there was no, like I said, that corruption was at a low level that it did not impact the benefits that people received from those projects. And also, it just doesn’t track with a corrupt government that has this unprecedented reduction in homicide rate that cleaned up the police, that purged the police, that instituted polygraph tests for police to make sure that they weren’t compromised when they were hired. Would you commit a crime? Have you ever taken a bribe? Questions that put them on the spot right at the beginning before they could even be accepted. That’s not the thing that a corrupt government does.
There could be corruption in the government, but there was not a government that tolerated it or tried. But did they catch every single instance of corruption? No, because that just doesn’t ever happen. But I think the right took advantage of that in the early years when Correa was laid off to generate, and the fact that I think that I know betrayed Correa, generated some confusion. That gave those allegations maybe a little bit of credibility early on. But with the catastrophe that they’ve created, I think for the most part, people realized that it was all just… It was all just a lot of smoke and mirrors meant to justify persecution and as an excuse for the right-wing to just explain away their own fair. They’re still trying to blame Korea for… How can he be responsible for an assassination that takes place six years after he’s in power, where they have controlled the police? These are the people in power for six years now. They have controlled the police, the military. It’s their military, it’s their police. So if candidates are being assassinated, assassinated, and they’re providing security, it’s pretty ridiculous to try to point the finger at a movement that’s been our power for six years.
Greg Wilpert
Now, let’s just turn to the current presidential election. And this also, of course, again, ties into the corruption issue, because as I mentioned earlier, it was one of the reasons why the election was called. But how does it look so far? I mean, who are the front runners and who is running, so to speak, basically, who are the main candidates and what are their chances?
Joe Emersberger
Lisa Gonzáles’s current to the average polls is very close to the 40 % point where she could win outright in the first round. Not only she needs 40% plus a 10-point margin of victory over everyone else. Sometimes the second, third-place finishers can sometimes be unclear. The polls can be off, but they look like there’s the former vice president under… One of the former vice presidents under Moreno, I’ll probably mispronounce his name, but everyone refers to him as Otto. Then there’s Jaco Perez is in there, a right-wing indigenous leader. There’s a few others, but they’re not very consequential. Via Vincentio was one of the candidates who’s not particularly consequential. A lot depends if Luisa or Gonzáles can win in the first round, that would be great for Correismo. If it goes to a second round, things get more complicated for them because then people, instead of these wide dispersion of votes among all these inconsequential candidates, perhaps one candidate can emerge and become more prominent and become more of a threat to win electoral. That’s setting aside any shenanigans that they pull with the state of exception or with the electoral council that is very clearly biased against Korea.
One of the outrageous ruling that they did in 2021 that they still have is that Korea’s image, he cannot appear in campaign ads. His image cannot be, so his image is not allowed to appear in campaign ads. It’s funny because you remember under Korea’s government, all the fuss that was made about freedom of expression. I mean, that’s just an outrageous ruling. But they’ve enforced that, and they’re doing that for this election as well. So it looks good for Correa, but who knows what now this chaos and the uncertainty of this assassination? We’ll have to see what impact that has.
Greg Wilpert
Well, it seems to me that certainly the assassination would make less likely that Luisa Gonzárez will be able to have that 10 % margin, because there are fewer, whatever, anti-Korea candidates, basically. So then it makes it more difficult for her to have that 10 % margin. The other thing, though, of course, is you mentioned Jaco Perez, who is basically running as a leftist candidate, isn’t he? Even though you say that he’s a right-wing candidate, which has caused quite a bit of confusion, I think, particularly among progressives who want to support one side or the other. What do you make of Perez’s chances? Is he a spoiler? And why do you call him a right-wing candidate instead of a progressive, as he’s often made out to be?
Joe Emersberger
In 2021, I know what you mean, he wants to portray himself as an eco-socialist, and some people in North America were taken in by that marketing. I did a thread on Twitter that went over just illustrating just how reactionary he is. I mean, he was a strong, very vocal supporter of the 2019 coup in Bolivia. I mean, he welcomed that. He applauded that, said that was a great thing that happened. He was supportive of the efforts to remove. He says he was hopefully that Maduro would fall as well. He wants Maduro to fall. When Aarau is really reactionary stuff. Aarau has had a proposal in 2021 to stimulate the economy-.
Greg Wilpert
Sorry, who.
Joe Emersberger
Is Aarau? The Vice-Presidential candidate in this election. He was the presidential candidate in 2021. Now, Aarau has had a proposal to give a $1,000 bonus to all Ecuadoran citizens, I believe it was all directed to the female heads of households as a way to stimulate the common during the pandemic. Yaku Peris, in the debate, said what he said was that that was a bad idea because the poor people have never seen that money before and they just spend it on beer. I mean, it’s just the ignorant statement that you get maybe from a Trump supporter. He was always just basically, when it came to criticizing Korea for years, he was always basically just echoed the right-wing talking points. There’s too much public spending. This is all just a waste of money. There’s too many taxes. He echoes the whole right-wing talking points, but then he adds some environmental claims he’s against mining, claims against… He puts an environmental spin on some of his positions. But he’s ultimately just a very reactionary person. He openly relished the fact that he was openly relished the fact that the role he played in 2021 and that the indigenous movement calling for a null vote, calling for abstention in 2021, he was on Twitter openly celebrating the fact that that cost he caressed the candidate and put Lasso in office.
In fact, in 2017, he openly endorsed Lasso, the very right-wing candidate. Just over and over again, he’s shown what he’s about. But sometimes people don’t… They believe they own his own spin or the spin that other people put on his views, and they try to protect him as a left-wing candidate when he’s obviously not.
Greg Wilpert
Well, the election is coming up very soon on August 20th, and we’ll see then what happens. Hopefully, everything goes well, considering that we’ve got this state of emergency that Laszlo just called. But we’ll definitely check in again on the state of things and we’ll leave it there for now. I was speaking to Joe Emerisberger, a Canadian engineer who regularly writes on Latin American particularly for his new website, new Substack page. Thanks again, Joe, for having joined me today.
Joe Emersberger
Thanks, Greg.
Greg Wilpert
And thank you, our audience, for joining The World on Fire. Until next time.
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