Amanda Villavicencio, the daughter of journalist and politician Fernando Villavicencio, delivered a letter to Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa at the Carondelet Palace (the presidential seat), calling for a 'national ethical agreement' to cleanse the State of 'narcopolitics'. 'Ecuador deserves dignity... this is no longer a partisan struggle, this is a struggle for the survival of the State,' she explained. According to Villavicencio, Noboa's defeat in the November 16th referendum, where voters rejected his proposals, including a Constituent Assembly to replace the current Constitution, evidenced that Ecuador has said 'enough to incompetence, improvisation, and silence.' She stated that the election result also revealed who 'will win the battle if the Government does not act urgently,' following the 'fireworks celebrations in territories controlled by organized crime.' 'This country must decide whether it wants to be a free nation or a territory administered by mafias,' continued Villavicencio's daughter. She also took the opportunity to attack Rafael Correa, the main opposition leader, accusing him of having acquired a 'mastery' in embedding all his tentacles in power despite not governing and 'embedding' 'narcopolitics' in the State. 'Narcopolitics is not a discourse, it is not a slogan, it is not a theory; it is a criminal structure that has embedded itself in the State, that has financed political campaigns, that has bought judges... This structure that achieved all these objectives has a political name, and we all know it, it is correism,' she declared. She also warned that if Noboa does not make the turn that Ecuador needs, correism will return with 'total violence'. On the same day, a former Ecuadorian police officer, a key witness in the Villavicencio murder case, stated that businessman Xavier Jordán, one of the four accused as masterminds of the crime along with people linked to correism, had offered him $300,000 to change his testimony in the case. To date, five people have been sentenced to prison as material authors of the murder, including Carlos Angulo ('The Invisible'), a leader of Los Lobos who was in charge of planning the execution and logistics of the homicide from prison. Another eight people involved in the case died before the trial, including the seven Colombian hitmen who participated in the assassination.
