On the heels of the assassination of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio a week ago, another lawmaker and political leader, Pedro Briones, was killed by a hitman on Aug. 14 at his home in the northern Esmeraldas province. Briones was a member of former President Rafael Correa’s Citizen Revolution party, whose candidate, Luisa Gonzalez, has been the strong frontrunner in the presidential election this coming Sunday, Aug. 20. Briones is the third political leader to be assassinated in less than four weeks, in a situation where everyone in Ecuador has already lived in terror over the drug cartels.
The wave began July 23, with the assassination of Agustin Intriago, the Mayor of the city of Manta. A press campaign immediately began with the aim of both crushing the Gonzalez- Correa political movement, and reestablishing the U.S. military base in Manta, giving the Pentagon its first permanent base in South America.
Stories started that Correa might have been behind the Villavicencio murder, since he had opposed Correa when he was President. Now, BBC and the Miami Herald’s Andres Oppenheimer (a long-standing State Department press hack) are promoting the charge that Correa is personally responsible for turning Ecuador over to the drug trade during his 2007-2017 presidency, claiming that his first step in handing the country over to the drug trade was his kicking the U.S. military out of its base then in Manta. Oppenheimer has gone so far as to promote the idea that if the Gonzalez-Correa ticket wins, Ecuador could become “a criminalized state.” [https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article278176677.html]
