The outgoing president of El Savador, Nayib Bukele, declared himself the winner of the presidential elections with over 85% of the votes in a post published on % of the votes and a minimum of 58-60 seats in the Assembly. A record in the entire democratic history of the world".
In front of thousands of cheering people, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, celebrated his electoral victory during the night, which ensured him an unprecedented second mandate not foreseen by the Constitution, and that of the Nuevas Ideas party (58 seats out of 60), claiming that "we will be the first country in history to have a single party in democracy, with a completely pulverized opposition".
When the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) had counted just 31% of the votes, Bukele proclaimed himself the "absolute winner" from the balcony of the National Palace in the historic center of the capital.
"Here there is no polarization - he assured - and 85% of Salvadorans voted to follow the path we undertook in the first mandate in full freedom and full democracy", underlining among the best initiatives adopted, the state of emergency introduced 22 months ago with which many civil rights of citizens were suspended.
"You have seen - he continued - how El Salvador went from being the most insecure country in the world to the safest. Now wait to see what we will do in the next five years".
"Never - she concluded - has a political project in El Salvador won with the number of votes we obtained today", and for us this is "a milestone in the history of democracies"
Meanwhile, the counting operations by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) are continuing much more slowly than expected, having been unable to respect the promised times for the communication of the preliminary results.
Thus, around midnight local time (7am Italian time), the data relating to the counting of 31.49% of the votes cast in the presidential elections were released, with 1,295,888 votes assigned to Bukele, followed by Manuel Flores (Fmln, left) with 110,244 votes and Joel Sánchez (Arena, right) with 96,700 votes.
However, in releasing these data, the TSE did not provide preliminary statistics on the total number of voters and turnout.
Overnight, the Cid Gallup polling institute released data from an exit poll carried out during election day in El Salvador according to which the outgoing president Nayib Bukele is credited with 87% of the vote, with a tendency to reach 90%.
The director of the Institute, Luis Haug, added that on the basis of interviews with 21,000 voters carried out since the polls opened at 7 in the morning, in second place is Manuel Flores, presidential candidate of the Farabundo Martì Front for National Liberation (Fmln , left) with 7%.
Third place, among the six candidates aspiring to the highest office in the state, goes to Joel Sánchez of the
right-wing Arena party (4%).
A similar very clear success, Haug preliminarily indicated, is looming for the government party Cid Gallup which, in the constituency of San Salvador where 16 seats in the Legislative Assembly were available, would have won 14, leaving only two to the other political formations.
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