Quito - (AFP) - About 13.4 million Ecuadorians were invited Sunday to participate in local elections and a referendum that will decide, in particular, whether the country will agree to extradite drug traffickers to the United States .

"Ecuadoreans, exercise your right to vote for the security and well-being of Ecuador ," President Guillermo Laso said on Twitter shortly after casting his vote in Guayaquil (southwest).

Voters choose the mayors, municipal councilors and county governors who will take office in May for a four-year term.

The stakes are above all local, but it will inevitably constitute a test for the right-wing president who came to power in 2021 and whose popularity has reached record levels (80% according to the latest poll).

The Electoral Commission said at midday that polling was "taking place under normal conditions".

The vote comes in a worrying context of increasing criminal violence in the country over the drug trade.

On Saturday, a candidate for mayor of a coastal city was assassinated, two weeks after the assassination of a candidate in another coastal city.

In parallel with the elections, voters will answer eight questions as part of a referendum called by President Laso in November, on various topics related to security, politics and the environment.

Attention is focused on the issue of extraditing citizens for trial in other countries, a procedure that has been banned for eight decades.

As part of his fight against drug trafficking, President Laso calls for making it possible to extradite Ecuadorians to other countries if they have committed offenses related to international organized crime.

The main objective is to extradite the drug traffickers to the United States, where they are likely to face long prison sentences in harsh conditions and without the possibility of bribing prison guards.

This procedure has been used in neighboring Colombia since the 1990s, and has served as a deterrent against major drug traffickers in a country that is the world's leading producer of cocaine.

Ecuador has seen a sharp rise in drug-related violence and crime in recent years.

And the homicide rate nearly doubled between 2021 and 2022.

Prisons witness frequent bloody violence between rival gangs linked to dangerous Mexican cartels.

However, the left-wing opposition, which controls the majority of seats in parliament, called on voters to refuse to allow the extradition of Ecuadorians for trial in other countries.