He was given the arch favorite. The outgoing president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, acclaimed for his fight against gangs in the Central American country, claimed to have been re-elected for a second term in the first round on Sunday February 4, in a message posted on the social network .
“According to our calculations, we won the presidential election with more than 85% of the votes,” said Nayib Bukele.
From our new numbers, we won the presidential election with more than 85% of the votes and a minimum of 58 of 60 votes in the Assembly.
The record in all the democratic history of the world.
We see you at 9pm at the Palacio Nacional.
Dios bendiga in El Salvador.
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) February 5, 2024
The young 42-year-old president, in power since 2019, added that his Nuevas Ideas party “wins at least 58 of the 60” seats in the Assembly, which according to him constitutes “a record in the entire democratic history of the whole world ".
The CID-Gallup institute, whose exit poll earlier gave Nayib Bukele the winner with 87% of the vote, also stressed that it had "never observed a gap of this magnitude during an election".
Fireworks fired into the sky over San Salvador accompanied the victory message from the president, who met his supporters in front of the National Palace, in the historic center of the capital.
A fight against the “cancer” of gangs
Nayib Bukele had previously congratulated himself on having defeated the “cancer” of criminal gangs and displayed his intention to maintain the “state of emergency”, in force since March 2022, after having voted, all smiles, white cap on head, jeans and blue polo shirt, next to his wife.
This exceptional regime, allowing arrests without warrant and deployment of the army in the streets, sent some 75,000 people behind bars. Around 7,000 of them, unjustly detained, were released.
Murders attributable to maras, local gangs, fell from more than 800 in 2019 to 57 last year, according to the NGO Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled).
"El Salvador suffered from metastases but we performed surgery, at the moment we are in the treatment phase but we will come out of this in good health, without the cancer of the gangs (...) We still have to recover and recover," Nayib Bukele said during a press conference lasting almost an hour.
Also read: Mass arrests, arbitrary detentions of innocent people: El Salvador's method against gangs
He was notably questioned about the criticisms made by his detractors, who denounce an authoritarian drift by a head of state who now concentrates all powers, and a danger for democracy. After replacing Supreme Court justices and the attorney general, he was able to circumvent the Constitution, which prohibits consecutive terms, by taking a six-month leave of absence before the vote.
"We are not replacing democracy, because El Salvador has never had a democracy. For the first time in history, El Salvador has a democracy, and it's not me who says it, it's the people", he declared, affirming: "we will find out if the people support the state of emergency".
With AFP
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