Most of the voting centers available in El Salvador for the presidential, legislative and municipal elections this Sunday (4) closed at 5pm (8pm in Brasília), giving way to the start of the counting of the election in which the current president, Nayib Bukele, seeks re-election. According to polls, he should obtain between 65 and 80% of the votes.
The 1,595 voting centers, most of them in educational institutions, have closed their doors, although in some places citizens continue to arrive to vote. Around 6.2 million Salvadorans (740 thousand abroad) were called to vote in these elections. Election day passed without serious incident, although nine people were arrested for violating ballot papers, making political proclamations at voting centers or appearing drunk.
The president of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party, Carlos Saade, denounced irregularities in the electoral process and asked the judges of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) to be very attentive to the counting of votes. “We observe everything without problems, but if there are specific issues, we invite you to report them”, declared the head of the electoral observation mission of the Organization of American States (OAS), Isabel de Saint Malo, who highlighted the high participation of Salvadoran residents abroad.
President Nayib Bukele, 42, is the first democratic-era president of El Salvador to run for re-election. If he wins, he will be the first to repeat the role. The path to Bukele's re-election was opened in 2021, when the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, which had been appointed by a Congress with a government majority without following the legal procedure, changed the criteria for interpreting the Constitution.
Bukele's popularity, according to polls, is supported mainly by his progress in security, as he managed to maintain and accentuate the decrease in homicides that began in 2016 and, according to authorities, wrest control of popular neighborhoods from gangs. Until 2015, El Salvador was considered one of the most violent countries in the world, with 103 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, a number that fell to 2.4 in 2023, making the country the safest in Latin America, according to the government.
An emergency regime approved by the ruling party in Congress, at Bukele's request, has resulted in more than 76,000 arrests and more than 6,000 reports of human rights abuses, including around 220 deaths in custody, short-term disappearances and torture.
#Salvador #begins #counting #prospect #Bukele39s #victory
