As El Salvador's electoral body begins a vote-by-vote recount of last week's election results, the political opposition warned Wednesday that they could request the annulment of the legislative election results due to irregularities.
Nobody questions the victory of popular President Nayib Bukele, who achieved re-election with 83% of the votes, but attention has focused on the fight for the 60 seats in dispute in Congress.
THE PRESIDENT OF EL SALVADOR, 'THE GREATEST DICTATOR IN THE WORLD', WINS THE CRUSHING RE-ELECTION, BLINKEN CONGRATULATES BUKELE
Control of Congress is crucial for Bukele. He hopes to continue giving up fundamental constitutional rights in his war against El Salvador's gangs, which have given him his growing popularity, and carry out other parts of his agenda.
Bukele already declared that his Nuevas Ideas party had won 58 of the 60 seats in Congress after Sunday night's elections, even though only a small fraction of the count was made public.
Now, the vote count has become a subject of scrutiny after a series of irregularities and failures caused the results transmission system to collapse. Due to the chaos, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal requested a manual recount of the votes from the legislative elections and part of the presidential votes.
Manuel Flores, presidential candidate of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), said he plans to speak with other opposition parties to demand that the results of the congressional elections be annulled and that another round be held on March 3. , when local elections are held.
“The problem is that they want to reach the number” that Bukele stated in his victory speech on Sunday, Flores said. “Fifty-eight, but it doesn't add up.”
Feminist protester holds a sign that says “Dictator Bukele” in English in Salvador del Mundo square in San Salvador, El Salvador, on Monday, February 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
Flores claimed the election was a “fraud” less than an hour after Sunday's vote, and that his party is among those who remain unpopular after years of corruption and failure to live up to their promises.
The majority of Bukele's New Ideas party in Congress and a friendly court they brought together allowed him to circumvent a constitutional ban on re-election. Electoral and opposition analysts also say that a recent electoral reform the party carried out stacked the odds in favor of Bukele's party, particularly in legislative and local elections.
The populist leader had already expressed his concern about the legislative elections. The week before Sunday's vote, Bukele warned in a video broadcast on social networks and television throughout the country that if Nuevas Ideas loses seats in Congress “the opposition will be able to achieve its true and only plan, free the gang members and use them “. return to power.”
Other opposition groups such as the Nuestro Tiempo party, the VAMOS party and the conservative National Republican Alliance (Arena) echoed Flores' concerns about vote counting. The parties said they were also considering asking for the results to be annulled, but were awaiting a response from the court to a request they made for more information about the irregularities.
While electoral magistrate Noel Orellana said the court has not yet received requests from parties to annul the results, its priority remains opening the polls and counting all the votes.
“The most important thing now is to give an accurate count,” Orellana said.
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The final counting of the votes will be supervised by representatives of the political parties, electoral prosecutors from the Public Ministry, the Human Rights Ombudsman's Office and national and international observers, among others.
