Who are Nayib Bukele’s opponents in the El Salvador elections?

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SAN SALVADOR (AP) — Become one of the most controversial political figures in Latin America for his publicized fight against gangs and with high popularity, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is on track to win re-election.

Despite accusations that his candidacy violates the constitution and that he seeks to perpetuate his authoritarian project, everyone assumes that Bukele will win the February 4 elections without major problems to continue in power for another five years.

The most recent survey by the Jesuit-led Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA) gives a wide advantage to Nuevas Ideas, Bukele’s party. According to the survey, in a simulation using a ballot similar to the one that will be used on February 4, 81.9% would vote for the ruling party, 4.2% for the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and 3. 4% for the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena).

Nuestro Tiempo appears with 2.5%, Fuerza Solidaria with 1.1% and Fraternidad Patriótica Salvadoreña (FPS) with 1%. 3% said they would abstain and another 3% said they would annul the vote. The calculations of the UCA study grant 57 of the 60 seats in Congress to Nuevas Ideas.

Below is a detail about Bukele’s main opponents in the elections.

MANUEL FLORES: The candidate of the leftist FMLN, known as “El Chino Flores”, 58 years old, is a former guerrilla who after the signing of the peace agreements in January 1992 dedicated himself to politics. He served as mayor of the municipality of Quezaltepeque from 2003 to 2012 and then as deputy of the Legislative Assembly from 2012 to 2021.

He studied at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in Biology and acquired Nicaraguan citizenship.

Flores has seemed upset when asked about the acts of corruption of the two FMLN governments because he says that he was not part of them.

According to the FMLN, a dictatorship rules in El Salvador. Flores has joined these criticisms and pointed out that there is little freedom of expression and political freedom.

In 2004 he established the China People’s Friendship Association and in 2018 he helped then-president Salvador Sánchez Cerén (2014-2019) open diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and break ties with Taiwan.

The FMLN governed the country from 2009 to 2019.

JOEL SÁNCHEZ: The 55-year-old businessman and Arena candidate claims to have no political past despite the fact that he campaigned for Tony Saca, of that right-wing force, in the 2004 presidential elections.

When he was 19 years old, he emigrated to the United States where he fought to survive: he washed dishes, was a cook and a cleaning technician, but over time he managed to found his own company in the same field, which later grew in the United States, with branches in Mexico and El Salvador. .

The Citizen Resistance movement presented him as a civil society candidate and then the Arena party announced that he was the one chosen to compete in the presidential elections.

Arena ruled the country for 20 years from 1989 to 2009.

LUIS PARADA: The 63-year-old politician, ex-military man and lawyer is an expert in international litigation who has defended El Salvador in successive lawsuits against the State before the World Bank’s International Center for Investment Arbitration (ICSID), which he has won. .

He studied at the Captain General Gerardo Barrios military school in El Salvador and the West Point Military Academy. He graduated as a lawyer from Georgetown University in the United States.

He participated in Arena’s internal process seeking to run as a presidential candidate in the 2019 elections, but the party opted for businessman Carlos Callejas.

He was a captain in the Salvadoran army and during his 14 years of service he served in different positions in the armed institution, among them he was head of the Cryptoanalyst section of the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI), at a time when an army commando murdered six Jesuit priests and their two collaborators and was a key witness for justice in the case against the soldiers who carried out that massacre in November 1989.

In February 2020, he resigned his rank of army captain after the entry of armed soldiers into the Salvadoran Congress on February 9 during a meeting called by President Bukele.

Parada assures that he was not seeking the candidacy, but after the request of representatives of a civil organization he agreed to compete under the banner of the conservative Nuestro Tiempo party, which was founded by Arena dissidents.

JAVIER RENDEROS: is a 60-year-old gynecologist who works in his private clinic. He was a candidate for mayor for the city of San Miguel, in the east of the country, nominated by the right-wing Arena in 2018 and was also a member of the municipal council of San Miguel.

Renderos, with a past with the Arena party, is nominated for Fuerza Solidaria.

MARINA MURILLO: She is an architect who has made a career in public service. In the beginning she worked in the National Area Restoration Commission. The candidate of the Salvadoran Patriotic Fraternity (FPS) party, she is the only woman running for the presidential elections.

The last time El Salvador had a woman as a presidential candidate was in 1994 when Rina Victoria Escalante de Rey Prendes participated, with the Authentic Christian Movement.