Highlights: Nayib Bukele is the country's first immediately re-elected incumbent president. His victory is clear: more than 85% of the votes according to the first official figures. His New Ideas party also won the assembly handily with at least 58 deputies out of 60. The 42-year-old president enjoys significant popularity. This is what allowed him to ignore the rules of his country. He promises to continue the war against the gangs that he launched in the spring of 2022 and which is plunging El Salvador into a state of exception.

Salvadorans have renewed their confidence in Nayib Bukele, triumphantly re-elected on Sunday in the first round of the presidential election. 6.2 million people were called to vote.

Salvador: President Bukele claims his broad re-election at the head of a country undermined by gangs

Salvadorans have renewed their confidence in Nayib Bukele, triumphantly re-elected on Sunday in the first round of the presidential election. 6.2 million people were called to vote.

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele and his wife shake their little fingers, proof of their vote in the February 4 presidential election, which ended with his re-election as head of the country. AP - Moises Castillo

By: RFI Follow

With our regional correspondent,

Gwendolina Duval

Nayib Bukele is the country's first immediately re-elected incumbent president. His victory is clear: more than 85% of the votes according to the first official figures. His New Ideas party also won the assembly handily with at least 58 deputies out of 60. The CID-Gallup institute, whose exit poll earlier gave Nayib Bukele the winner with 87% of the votes, also stressed having “

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, reports AFP on the spot.

On his X account, his preferred communication media where he announced his victory, Bukele boasts of a record in the history of world democracy. But democracy is a controversial subject in this country which, in the name of improving its security situation, has been living in a state of exception and restrictions on rights for almost two years.

The young 42-year-old head of state, elected for the first time in 2019, congratulated himself on having defeated the “

cancer

” of criminal gangs and expressed his intention to maintain

the “state of emergency

”, in course since March 2022, after voting, all smiles, white cap on his head, jeans and blue polo shirt, alongside his wife.

Read alsoPresidential election in El Salvador: Nayib Bukele, outgoing and controversial president, arch-favorite

The re-election of Nayib Bukele is not a surprise. Despite the illegality of his candidacy, prohibited by the Constitution, the 42-year-old Salvadoran president enjoys significant popularity. This is what allowed him to ignore the rules of his country.

Left for five years, he promises to continue the war against the gangs that he launched in the spring of 2022 and which is plunging El Salvador into a state of exception that is still in force. Bukele's security policy, which consists of strengthening the power of the army, the construction of mega-prisons, and the mass arrests of more than 75,000 people, has caused crime to drop drastically in this small Central American country which was still five years ago one of the most dangerous in the world. 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).

But the detention of innocent people without trial, the living conditions in prisons and the weakening of justice and Salvadoran institutions are at the heart of criticism from NGOs and the international community, which denounce human rights violations and an authoritarian drift.

Salvador: President Bukele claims his broad re-election at the head of a country undermined by gangs

Salvador: President Bukele claims his broad re-election at the head of a country undermined by gangs

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