Elections in El Salvador: the electoral tribunal confirms the victory of Nayib Bukele with 84.6% of the votes

The Salvadoran Supreme Electoral Court announced on Friday that, with 99.1% of the electoral data examined, the president Nayib Bukele he won re-election with 84.6% of the votes.

According to the final exam, he was in second place Manuel Floresof the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), with 6.4%, Judge Noel Orellana informed journalists in the courthouse.

Joel Sanchez the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) was in third place with 5.5%; followed by former army captain Luis Parada, of Nuestro Tiempo, with 2.3%; Javier Renderos, of the Fuerza Solidaria, with 0.7%, and Marina Murillo, of the Salvadoran Patriotic Front, with 0.6%.

According to the examination, the 52.1% of Salvadorans those entitled to vote in the country and abroad exercised the vote. The rest did not go to the polls or vote online.

Bukele’s victory confirmed the predictions of all polls, including that of the José Simeón Cañas University (UCA), managed by the Jesuits, in which Nuevas Ideas appeared with 81.1% of voting intentions.

Second term

This will be the second term five years of Bukele, who won in the first round in 2019, beating a coalition of right-wing parties. The new mandate will be assumed by 1st of June.

The Salvadoran president, who enjoys great popularity, based his campaign on the fight against feared criminal gangs and warned Salvadorans that if his party did not win the presidential and legislative elections war was at risk against these criminal organizations.

Despite continued doubts about his candidacy from political parties and human rights organizations – for violating the constitutional ban preventing immediate re-election – Bukele managed to convince the justice system to allow his candidacy.

On Sunday, shortly after voting closed and in an event that brought together thousands of his followers in the Plaza Cívica, in the historic center of San Salvador, Bukele proclaimed himself the winner and said that he had broken “all records of all democracies in history” despite there being no official results yet.

“Never has a project won with the number of votes we obtained today. It is literally the highest percentage in all of history,” he added from the balcony of the National Palace accompanied by his wife.

Bukele also said that Nuevas Ideas obtained 58 of the 60 deputies in the Legislative Assembly, a key point in maintaining the emergency regime and its security policy focused on fighting criminal gangs.

It is expected that in the next few hours the Electoral Tribunal will begin the final counting of the election of deputies.

The confirmation of Bukele’s victory was complicated because faulty transmission system which allowed only 6,015 minutes of the presidential elections to be digitized, leaving 2,547 pending. The Court ordered that a final count be initiated to review all minutes and count vote by vote.

Bukele has become a political phenomenon for its security policy. Two years after implementing the crackdown on gangs, more than 76,000 people remain in prison, most without there being a sentence against him.

National and international organizations have questioned Bukele about human rights abuses, but the president accuses them of defending criminals who have controlled much of the territory for more than three decades.