Fernando Villavicencio

Fernando Alcibiades Villavicencio Valencia (11 October 1963 – 9 August 2023) was an Ecuadorian journalist, trade unionist, and politician who ran for president of Ecuador in the 2023 Ecuadorian general election.

He served as a member of the National Assembly from 2021 until the dissolution of the legislative body on 17 May 2023, which caused the 2023 Ecuadorian political crisis and a snap election.

Prior to his political career, Villavicencio was an investigative journalist covering corruption and violence in Ecuador.

A critic of former president Rafael Correa, Villavicencio was in exile in Peru after legal issues following his public critiques of the Correa administration.

After college, he was one of the founders of the Pachakutik Party in 1995.

He joined Petroecuador in 1996 first as a social communicator and then as a trade unionist until 1999, when he was fired by the government of Jamil Mahuad.

Villavicencio began his journalism career with El Universo in Guayaquil.

During his investigative career at El Universo, he was critical of various governments including that of Gustavo Noboa, whom he accused of corruption.

Villavicencio was the first to report about detailed security logs on Julian Assange that staff and security guards at Ecuador's UK embassy kept.

During this time, Jiménez and Villavicencio accused President Rafael Correa of having ordered an armed incursion at a hospital during a police revolt in September 2010.

He was sued by Correa for libel, and Villavicencio was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

He traveled to Washington, D.C., seeking assistance from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, but when he returned to Ecuador, he already had an arrest warrant against him.

Instead of turning himself in, he hid in the Amazon region until his sentence expired.

During the 2013–2014 National Assembly session, Villavicencio was a parliamentary assistant to Cléver Jiménez.

In 2015, Cynthia Viteri and Villavicencio sent secret documents to WikiLeaks showing that Ecuador was using an Italian company to run a surveillance program that was spying on journalists and political enemies, in addition to spying on Julian Assange in the embassy.

The New York Times reported that leaked chat logs from 2015 show that Assange and his inner circle were aware of the documents, which were not published by WikiLeaks.

Having unsuccessfully run for the National Assembly in 2017, Villavicencio was elected in 2021, representing the national constituency.

In May 2023, he announced his presidential candidacy for that year's general election.

Following a campaign rally in Quito, Villavicencio was assassinated on 9 August 2023.

Villavicencio was born in Alausí, in the province of Chimborazo.

He studied journalism and communication at the Cooperative University of Colombia.

He was married to Verónica Sarauz, whom he met while working at the National Assembly.

They have five children together.

At first, when he announced his parliamentary candidacy for the 2017 general election, his campaign was disallowed due to his legal charges.

Once the charges were dismissed, he was able to resume his campaign; however, he lost the election.

After his defeat, he was arrested on charges of insult and espionage following his criticisms of the Correa administration.

He spent several months imprisoned until all charges were dropped in February 2018.

In December 2018, WikiLeaks alleged that Villavicencio was a "serial fabricator" involved in a story in The Guardian which claimed that U.S. President Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort had met Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Whilst TheGuardian.com identified the story as having been written only by Dan Collyns and Luke Harding, the print edition mentioned Villavicencio's name as a third author.

He fled to Peru and during his asylum in the country, all charges against him were dropped in February 2018.

Villavicencio ran again for the National Assembly in 2021 under the Honesty Alliance, this time winning a seat for the national constituency.

In September 2022, Villavicencio claimed he was the target of an assassination attempt after his Quito home was allegedly attacked by gunfire.

In May 2023, his tenure at the National Assembly ended with President Guillermo Lasso's dissolution of the National Assembly.

Prior to the dissolution, Villavicencio was criticized by several Assembly members due to his obstruction of Lasso's impeachment process.

Shortly after the National Assembly was dissolved, Villavicencio announced his candidacy for president of Ecuador in the 2023 election.

He focused on the growing corruption, violence in the country, and environmental protection.

During his campaign, he called Ecuador a "narco state" due to the rise in gang-related violence.

In June 2023, he named environmentalist Andrea González Náder as his running mate on the Movimiento Construye (MC-25) ticket.

On 10 June, the Villavicencio-González ticket registered its candidacy for the MC-25 alliance.

On 16 June, the National Electoral Council rejected his candidacy due to insufficient information; however, the issue was resolved and his candidacy was approved four days later.