El Salvador’s President Claims Victory in Poll Whose Result Is Yet to Be Made Public
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador who is credited with cracking down on gangs in the Central American nation says, he has been re-elected.
The 42-year-old took to social media to say he had won 85% of the vote but this has yet to be confirmed.
Mr. Bukele was allowed to stand for a second term by the constitutional court.
His popularity has soared following a crackdown on crime that has transformed the country’s security situation which has gone from one of the most violent countries in the world to one of the safest in Latin America today.
Mr. Bukele, a former mayor of the capital San Salvador, has described himself as the world’s coolest dictator.
Ahead of Sunday’s vote, he told voters that his achievements could be reversed if he was not re-elected.
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Hours earlier, bullish Bukele held a press conference and said his party needed all the support it could muster to maintain its anti-gang fight and continue reshaping El Salvador.
So, if we have already overcome our cancer, with metastases that were the gangs, now we only have to recover and be the person we always wanted to be, said Bukele.
I believe El Salvador, after half a century of suffering now it is our time to move forward.
Few doubted the outcome of the elections. Polls showed most voters appear set to reward Bukele for decimating the crime groups that made life intolerable in El Salvador and fueled waves of migration to the United States.
We have to continue the changes that are happening in our country – positive changes. We have no crime, tourism has sky-rocketed, said construction worker Victor Lopez, 65, who was among the first people to vote at the same center where Bukele cast his ballot.
We cannot let the corrupt people from before have power again, Lopez added.
Pre-election polling put support in the single digits for the candidates of FMLN and ARENA, two parties that held power between them until 2019, with voters fed up after decades of traditional politics marked by violence and corruption.
