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An “outsider” on the ballot: Jan Topic, the “Ecuadorian Bukele” who wants to be president of his country
«French mercenary», «Rambo», «Ecuadorian Bukele»… Jan Topic has plenty of nicknames although deep down he is an «outsider» with no defined ideology, who through a video on Twitter jumped from the militia to the political arena to run for the presidency of Ecuador.
At 40 years old, almost 1.80 meters tall, with a beard, tattoos and smiles, Topic has created a relaxed image in the middle of a campaign in which he repeats as a mantra that “Ecuador deserves to live without fear.”
The successful businessman hopes to win early elections in August to end the current presidential term (2021-2025), after President Guillermo Lasso dissolved Parliament and called the polls in a country hit by an institutional crisis and violence linked to the drug trafficking
When Topic arrives at a campaign event, kisses, compliments and “selfies” rain down on him, while he promises a strong hand and the construction of more prisons in the fight against organized crime in the style of the Salvadoran ruler Nayib Bukele.
“I sympathize with Bukele” but “in 16 months, the subject will change, Bukele will be called the Topic of Salvador,” he says with a laugh in an interview with AFP on the terrace of his family’s buoyant security company in Guayaquil, where he has his campaign headquarters.
Of Croatian descent by his father and French by his mother, this former paratrooper and former sniper of the Foreign Legion of the French Army has a “possibility” of reaching the ballot, according to the private pollster Clima Social.
His formula: he presents himself as anti-system, he is very active on social networks and touches one of the most sensitive fibers for Ecuadorians, such as insecurity.
Their goal: to stop kidnappings, extortion, homicides, and prison massacres as a solution to all of Ecuador’s ills, including the economic debacle.
“It is not declaring war (on the mafias), the war has already been declared,” says Topic, who says he is the only candidate with enough “temper and determination to act” to put illegal organizations in check.
Soldier by “conviction”
While studying economics and mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, he felt the call to “fight the war on terror.”
It was September 11, 2001 and the crash of four hijacked planes against the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon in Washington and a field in Pennsylvania left more than 2,900 dead.
“I felt strongly that I wasn’t doing my part,” Topic confesses. He graduated, quit his job on Wall Street and enlisted in the Foreign Legion (2006-2011), where he was a sniper team leader, with whom he fought in the Central African Republic and the Ivory Coast.
Later, as a volunteer, he was in the war in Syria (2012) and later in Ukraine against the Russian invasion (one month in 2022).
But he rejects being called a “mercenary.” «It does not fit me because what a mercenary does is go to combat for money. When I went to the Legion (…) it is not that you go for money, you go for conviction, for ideology », he explains.
Topic was born in the port of Guayaquil, the Ecuadorian city hardest hit by crime and drug trafficking by numerous armed groups.
The businessman in the areas of security and telecommunications wants to assume “a new leadership, to prepare and go and fight” both the mafias and corruption.
But his critics recall that one of his family businesses was marred by the Odebrecht corruption scandal. “They come to take control of Ecuador’s telecommunications and with a rifle,” said candidate Fernando Villavicencio days ago, referring to Topic.
Villavicencio chaired the Oversight Commission of the dissolved Congress, which had a tough campaign against corruption.
“Sambo’s Tail”
His muscular arms display black tattoos made “all over” the world. One of them says in Arabic: “Death fears him because he has the heart of a lion,” a phrase Topic heard in Somalia. He also carries the flame of the Foreign Legion and a religious symbol about “the man-God relationship.”
Topic emerged as an independent for the elections, in which the 137 members of Congress who will legislate until May 2025 will also be elected.
Now he is supported by the so-called Alliance for a Country without Fear, made up of three parties of the right, center and center left. He is one of the eight presidential candidates and one of the least known, according to polls.
Jan Topic in the campaign (Photo: AFP).
It defines itself on the right in terms of opening markets, promoting trade agreements and applying economic austerity, but on the left on social issues.
One of his government plans is to provide free meals in state schools so that children “do not become triggermen (hitmen) for gangs” linked to drug trafficking.
They call him the “Rambo de Sambo” because he lives in the exclusive sector of Samborondón, neighboring Guayaquil, with his wife and three children. He says little about his family and private life, but he says that he has six cats and that he often climbs one of the hills near the port.
2023-06-29 16:05:56
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