Salvadoran Electoral Court confirms Bukele’s re-election with 84.65% of the votes

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SAN SALVADOR (AP) — The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of El Salvador declared on Saturday final the final count that confirms that the young businessman Nayib Bukele won the presidential elections and will continue to govern the country for another five years.

“Mr. Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez and Mr. Félix Ulloa Jr., respectively nominated by the Nuevas Ideas political party, are declared elected president and vice president of the Republic of El Salvador,” the Court indicated in the minutes of the final scrutiny signed by the five judges. owners.

The minutes made official that, after processing the 8,562 minutes of the national vote receiving boards and the minutes of the vote abroad, Bukele reached 2,701,725 ​​votes, equivalent to 84.65% of the valid votes.

In second place was Manuel Flores, from the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN with 204,167 votes, 6.40%), while Joel Sánchez, from the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), reached 177,881 valid votes, 5.57%, followed by former army captain Luis Parada, from Nuestro Tiempo, with 65,076 votes, 2.4%.

Javier Renderos, from Fuerza Solidaria, obtained 23,473 votes, 0.74%, and Marina Murillo from Fraternidad Patriótica Salvadoreña, obtained 19,293, 0.60% of the valid votes.

According to the Electoral Code, elections are won by whoever obtains half plus one of the valid votes cast.

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

This will be the second five-year term for Bukele, who in 2019 won in the first round, in which he defeated a coalition of right-wing parties. He will assume the new mandate on June 1.

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

Despite the constant questioning of his candidacy by political parties and human rights organizations—for contravening the constitutional prohibition that prevents immediate re-election—Bukele managed to get the judiciary to authorize him.

Shortly after the closing of the vote on Sunday, February 4, and in an event that gathered thousands of his followers in the Plaza Cívica in the historic center of San Salvador, despite the fact that there were still no official results, Bukele proclaimed himself the winner and said that he had broken “all the records of all democracies in all of history.”