The left-wing party seen as the front-runner in Ecuador’s election filed a last-minute objection seeking to block the replacement for slain candidate Fernando Villavicencio from contention.
(Bloomberg) — The left-wing party seen as the front-runner in Ecuador’s election filed a last-minute objection seeking to block the replacement for slain candidate Fernando Villavicencio from contention.
The objection was filed by Citizen Revolution, the party of self-exiled former President Rafael Correa, one of Villavicencio’s political foes. The move leaves Christian Zurita’s legal status as a candidate in doubt just days before the Aug. 20 election.
The head of Ecuador’s electoral authority, Diana Atamaint, confirmed that the objection arrived late on Tuesday night, shortly before a midnight deadline. Construye rejected the complaint as baseless, saying that it was based on a fraudulent registration of Zurita as a member of another political organization.
Ecuador is headed to the polls on Sunday in its most dramatic election in decades. Villavicencio, an investigative journalist, was shot and killed just 10 days before the election.
His party, Construye, has registered Zurita as his replacement. But the Ecuadorian elections regulator has waited to confirm his candidacy, saying it had to see if anybody would object. Now it’s possible there won’t be enough time to analyze the objection before the vote.
Citizen Revolution’s candidate, Luisa Gonzalez, has led in the polls, but her lead slipped in one survey taken after Villavicencio’s killing, with anti-crime hard-liner Jan Topic and Zurita gaining ground.
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