Ecuador’s elections are to continue as planned following the August 9 assassination of candidate Fernando Villavicencio but will take place under a two-month state of emergency in which soldiers will guard polling stations, the country’s president, Guillermo Lasso, said in a televised address made after midnight.

With cabinet members and electoral officials standing by his side, Lasso said: “We agree in the face of the loss of a patriot and a fighter, elections should not be suspended; on the contrary, they should be held and democracy should be strengthened.”

He then announced that three days of national mourning would be held.

“I want to say to those who want to threaten the state, we will not hand over the power and the democratic institutions to organised crime, even though it is disguised as political organisations,” he added.

Villavicencio was shot dead as he left a campaign event in Quito. Days before his murder, he had described receiving several death threats that he alleged came from the jailed leader of the Choneros gang, Alias Fito. In the threats, Fito allegedly ordered Villavicencio to stop mentioning his name.

The attorney general’s office announced that a suspect in the killing died from injuries sustained during the shootout that took place after Villavicencio was shot. Six arrests were made in connection with the attack, it added.

Villavicencio’s uncle, Galo Valencia, was quoted at the scene of the shooting by the Guardian, blaming the state for not providing his nephew with enough security. Valencia told how he thought the gunshots that rang out were the sound of fireworks let off by supporters until “we saw that there were wounded falling, blood, injured people”.

“What we witnessed was like a horror film. The death of my relative. I have no words for what’s happening in the country. They just killed democracy,” he said, adding: “What insecurity we live in … if a man who fought more than 20 years, the most likely to win the elections, is silenced. Is this the way to win elections?”

Villavicencio, 59, who was married and had five children, was in fact one of eight candidates in the August 20 first round of the elections and was not regarded as a frontrunner. He was polling around the middle of the pack.

The top issue in the elections is the rise of violence and crime seen in the small South American country in the past two years, in which the murder rate has doubled. The surge in violent crime has shocked the nation, once a relatively peaceful country, but devastated by the arrival of international drug cartels profiting from booming cocaine production. Part of the nightmare is the frequency with which rival drug-trafficking gangs have committed prison massacres.

President Lasso said after the killing of Villavicencio: “Organised crime has gone too far but they will feel the full weight of the law.”

Another candidate in the elections, Otto Sonnenholzner, tweeted: “Our deepest condolences and deep solidarity with the loved ones of Fernando Villavicencio. May God keep him in his glory. Our country has gotten out of hand.”

Villavicencio was the candidate for the Build Ecuador Movement. A former union member at state oil company Petroecuador, he later became a journalist, and once fled to Indigenous territory within Ecuador and, in 2017, was given asylum in Peru.

The assassination came on the same day that Lasso appointed a new director of the national prison agency, SNAI, in the wake of further outbreaks of violence at one of the country’s most violent prisons, Guayaquil's Litoral Penitentiary (or CPL Guayas 1).

Lasso in late July declared a 60-day state of emergency covering Ecuador’s prisons after violence at Litoral. The president has frequently declared such emergency regimes in prisons during efforts to address violence that has markedly increased since 2021, leading to the deaths of at least 400 prisoners.

The new prison head is Luis Ordonez, a retired soldier and intelligence expert, who will replace Guillermo Rodriguez. Rodriguez resigned last week after facing a hail of criticism over failures to bring about improvements in the prison system.

During the two years of Lasso’s presidency six different directors have headed SNAI.

Lasso dissolved the country’s National Assembly on May 17 and called for an early election. Since then, local reports have painted a picture of rising gang violence and insecurity across the country, home to around 18mn.

Following violent riots in Litoral and some other prisons between July 22 and 25, Lasso on July 25 declared the state of emergency and authorised the entry of the armed forces into the prisons to regain control. Three days later, two police officers were shot dead while they ate breakfast at a rest stop in Samborondon in Guayas Province.

On July 22, local media reported the start of clashes between rival criminal gangs Los Lobos and Los Tiguerones in Litoral Penitentiary. Inmates were said to have used firearms as well as explosives during the confrontations that lasted until July 25. According to the prosecutor’s office, 31 prisoners were killed and 14 people, including a police officer, were injured.

The Litoral riots appeared to trigger a series of incidents in other prisons, with inmates in the Latacunga, Riobamba, Ambato, El Inca, Azogues and Esmeraldas prisons going on hunger strikes. They also held more than 120 people as hostages – including police officers, prison guides, administrative assistants and visitors – as they pressed demands for better conditions.

Since the eruption of violence and declaration of a state of emergency, various criminal gangs have claimed agreements with the government to offer a period of peace in the country. But Lasso’s right-wing administration has denied striking any such agreements.

“Organised crime is trying to impose itself, but we are not giving in," Lasso said on July 27 in Quito. "I want to be emphatic: We have not made a pact with criminals, as they pretend to show."

In late July, Luisa Gonzalez, the presidential candidate for the leftist Citizen Revolution Movement party, was cited by Peoples Dispatch as saying: “It is outrageous to see a totally inoperative government. That it is the leaders of criminal gangs who are speaking out only means one thing: The gangs are in control of the country and not the president of the Republic.”