Well, ya know, things happen, from time-to-time
EXCLUSIVE: How Bill Clinton’s Penthouse Pet lover died in a mysterious house fire that her sister believes was started to cover up her affair with the then Arkansas governor
The election was triggered by Lasso’s dissolution of the National Assembly in May, before the opposition-controlled legislature could hold impeachment hearings on embezzlement charges. Lasso is not a candidate in the Aug. 20 vote. Villavicencio had been a member of the Assembly from 2017 until Lasso dissolved it.
This was the first assassination of a presidential candidate in Ecuador, “once a relatively safe nation” that “has been consumed by violence related to narco-trafficking in the last five years,” The New York Times reported. Foreign drug mafias have joined forces with “local prison and street gangs, unleashing a wave of violence unlike anything in the country’s recent history. Homicide rates are at record levels,” and “the violence is often horrific and public, meant to induce fear and exert control.”