On another election night in El Salvador, confusion reigns again. It is clear that Nayib Bukele's party and its allies won this Sunday in the majority of the 44 municipalities at stake in these local elections, but the nature of communication and the different versions of some close results in certain localities have caused confusion. The president, who was re-elected a month ago for another five years in office, once again preceded the Supreme Electoral Court and assured that the party he founded and its satellite formations won 43, that is, the opposition won in only one municipality.
The parties with different acronyms supporting the government have defeated Nuevas Ideas in their fiefdoms, but Bukele is making these victories his own. This happened, for example, at the GANA party in Libertad Costa, where the use of Bitcoin was tested among surfing tourists. In any case, the electoral authority continued counting the votes this evening, on a day in which there was no large influx; it is estimated that voter turnout was low. The presidential election also lacked the frenzy typical of campaigns where power is truly at stake. Bukele's victories are so clear that there is no room for uncertainty.
Election observers have decried the obstacles journalists faced in covering this election day, which is nothing new in a country where its president attacks the media daily. Former Panamanian Foreign Minister Isabel de Saint Malo, head of the OAS mission in El Salvador, has denounced the expulsion of reporters from the premises where votes are being counted. “The journalistic role as observer of the process is fundamental to the transparency of the counting, transmission and verification,” Saint de Malo said on social networks. Pedro de Vaca, the IACHR's special rapporteur on freedom of expression, echoed this criticism, emphasizing that journalism “must not be understood as a disability.”
The message with which Bukele announced the results has several readings. First, it is steeped in criticism from those who claim that El Salvador is sliding down an authoritarian abyss. The president governs under an emergency regime that has been approved more than 25 times in the past two years by the Legislative Assembly, which his party overwhelmingly controls. Using this mechanism, which suspends many civil liberties, the army has taken to the streets and arrested thousands of young people. To put it bluntly, it completely put an end to the Salvadoran gangs, a criminal network that had existed for decades. This has made Bukele enormously popular, who also controls the judiciary with his own judges. This meant he could be re-elected for another five years, even though the Salvadoran constitution expressly forbade this. Therefore, it is not in vain that he proclaims his victory by saying: “In El Salvador we live in a democracy and the decision of the people is respected.”
Next, he acknowledges that in many municipalities people voted for mayors who were not from their party. “This is punishment for the terrible lengths some of them have gone to. This is why, as everyone has noted, I did not support a mayoral candidate. However, the people are wise and the new mayors belong to parties that are undeniable allies of our project,” he explained. According to them, for the first time in a democracy, the FMLN, the classic left-wing party, has not won either a mayor's office or a deputy. Bukele belonged to this party, which he split from when he was not elected presidential candidate in 2019. Now he wanted to erase all traces of that past by deleting tweets with quotes from Che Guevara and applause for the government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Arena, on the right the office of a single mayor.
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