This Thursday, Ecuador asked the Mexican ambassador in Quito to leave the country, declaring her “persona non grata”, following criticism from President Andrés Manuel López Obrador about the last Ecuadorian elections in which a candidate was murdered.
The Government considered the Mexican president’s statements “very unfortunate” when he questioned the alleged manipulation of the media to “create a rarefied atmosphere of violence” that, according to him, ended up affecting the leftist candidate Luisa González, rival of the current president Daniel Noboa.
The Foreign Ministry resolved to “declare the Ambassador of Mexico in Quito, Mrs. Raquel Serur Smeke, ‘persona non grata’,” according to a statement.
The decision “implies that the ambassador must leave the country shortly,” although diplomatic relations are not broken, the Ministry said.
On Wednesday, April 3, López Obrador assured that in the Ecuadorian elections, the assassination of the centrist Fernando Villavicencio in August 2023 caused the voting intention of González, who was leading the polls, to fall.
She “remains a suspect after this murder, she continues campaigning in circumstances, I consider, very difficult because imagine all the media, but she continues and continues and continues,” said the left-wing president.
A “second stage,” according to the Mexican president, was to “create a rarefied atmosphere of violence, to the extent that the candidates – and this is reported by all the media – wear (bulletproof) vests to the debates, but all armed” by the press.
The first round of the elections in August 2023 and the runoff in October took place under a climate of fear due to the onslaught of drug gangs.
“Well, the candidate (González) did not win and the most unfortunate thing is that the violence continues,” he insisted.
Supported by right-wing forces and self-proclaimed center-left, Noboa came to power at the age of 35 as the youngest president in the history of Ecuador after the return to democracy. The son of a tycoon, he has reported death threats since his political campaign and often wears a bulletproof vest at public events.
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