Ecuador votes for president just days after candidate’s assassination

Ecuadorans are voting Sunday in a tense election just days after the brazen assassination of a presidential candidate underscored the extent to which drug violence has consumed this once-peaceful nation.

The presidential vote was unusual from the start. President Guillermo Lasso triggered the fast-track election in May after dissolving the legislature and moving to rule by decree in a last-ditch effort to avoid impeachment. Lasso, one of the few remaining conservative leaders in the region, was the first Ecuadoran president to apply a constitutional move known as a muerte cruzada — roughly, “mutual death.” The device allows the president to dissolve the legislature but also triggers new elections, including for the executive branch. (Lasso declined to run).

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