Ecuadorans to vote in anti-crime referendum as death toll from violence mounts

Millions of Ecuadorans will cast ballots in a referendum on Sunday to decide whether or not to green-light stricter measures against organised crime in a country gripped by bloody gang wars.

Once a bastion of peace situated between major cocaine producers, the South American country has been plunged into crisis after years of expansion by the transnational cartels that use its ports to ship the drug to the United States and Europe.

The mayor of a mining town in violence-riddled Ecuador was shot dead Friday in the second such killing in recent days ahead of Sunday's referendum, when voters will be asked to approve tougher measures against organised crime, said police.

Jorge Maldonado, the mayor of Portovelo, “fell victim to gunshots that resulted in his death”, police said on X.

He was gunned down by two attackers on a motorcycle.

Images seen by AFP showed the slain mayor lying on a sidewalk with a pool of blood around his head.

The bloodshed came in the midst of an energy debacle due to a severe drought, which has emptied reservoirs to alarming levels and left the nation grappling with blackouts of up to 13 hours.

Maldonado was the fifth Ecuadoran mayor assassinated in a year, and the third in less than a month.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

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