BUENOS AIRES, August 10. /TASS/. Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso has called the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio a "political crime."

"[The Villavicencio murder] is not a coincidence <...>, it is a political crime of a terrorist nature <...>, an attempt to disrupt the elections," Lasso said in an address to the nation, which was broadcasted on the presidential administration’s YouTube channel.

Early presidential and parliamentary elections in Ecuador were scheduled for August 20. According to polls, right-wing candidate Villavicencio was polling at 4th or 5th place against rival candidates in the presidential contest.

The politician, representing the Construye movement, was killed after a pre-election event on the evening of August 9 in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. Nine other people were injured in the attack. According to the General Prosecutor's Office, one of the suspects in the attack had been fatally wounded in a shootout with police. A state of emergency has been declared.

In May 2023, President Lasso called an early election in order to dissolve parliament, saying that lawmakers were preventing the government from carrying out reforms. Lasso, whose term in office was initially to have expired in 2025, announced that he would not run in the election.

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