The victim is Cosme Parrales, director of the El Rodeo prison, located in the city of Portoviejo, belonging to the coastal province of Manabí, confirmed in a statement the National Service for Comprehensive Care of Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), the state penitentiary agency.

According to the local press, Parrales, who had taken over as director of the prison five days ago, was shot dead by alleged hired assassins in a cevicheria where he was having lunch, in the town of Jipijapa, near Portoviejo.

This is the third homicide in five days of an authority in Ecuador, after those registered on Wednesday and Friday of two mayors of municipalities in the south of the country where there are illegal mining activities.

Parrales' assassination put an end to the peaceful environment in which the voting day had been taking place until then, without major incidents, apart from those caused by the torrential rains of the last few hours in various areas of the country, which prevented the opening of at least three polling stations.

The management and security of prisons are among the 11 questions of the popular consultation called by Noboa so that Ecuadorians could vote on the planned reforms, less than a year before the new general elections, scheduled for February 2025.

One of the questions proposes that the Armed Forces be in charge of controlling access to prisons, the epicentre of the violence crisis that has led Ecuador to become one of the countries with the highest number of homicides in Latin America, with a rate of 45 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023.

It also proposes that the military support the police in their operations against organised crime on a permanent basis, without the need to declare states of exception, such as the one decreed by Noboa at the beginning of the year, with which he also declared an "internal armed conflict" against criminal groups.

With this measure, he will militarise the prisons to take control away from the criminal groups, who had managed to enter them and concentrate large arsenals of firearms and explosives there, often used in massacres within the prisons due to conflicts between rival groups, which since 2020 have caused the murder of around 500 inmates.

Noboa's referendum also aims at other measures, such as allowing weapons seized from criminals to be used to equip the State's security forces and authorising the extradition of Ecuadorian citizens who are wanted by the justice system of other countries.

Ecuadorians will also vote on whether they agree with the creation of a system of courts specialising in constitutional law, the recognition of international arbitration in any jurisdiction as a method to attract foreign investment and the authorisation of temporary hourly contracts, with the idea of encouraging job creation.

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