El Salvador: The counting of ballots begins after the closure of the polling stations

Most of the voting centers installed in The Savior for the presidential, legislative and municipal elections to be held this Sunday closed at 5:00 p.m. this Sunday (23:00 GMT), giving way to the start of the recount of elections in which the current president, Nayib Bukeleis running for re-election, even though the Constitution does not allow it.

The 1,595 voting stations, mostly installed in educational centers, closed their doors, although in some places citizens continued to arrive with the intention of voting.

Some 6.2 million Salvadorans (740,000 abroad) were called to vote today in these elections, which are held under the emergency regime decreed on March 27, 2022 by President Bukele, something that has not happened since the war ended. civil in 1992.

Election day passed without serious incidents, Although nine people were arrested for tearing electoral ballots, making political proclamations at polling places or showing up while intoxicated (from yesterday Saturday until tomorrow Monday, dry law applies in the country).

The president of the Nationalist Republican Alliance party (Arena), Carlos Saadedenounced irregularities in the electoral process and asked the judges of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) to be very attentive to the vote count.

Meanwhile, the electoral observer mission of the Organization of American States (OAS) has taken note of the peculiarity of the elections being held under the emergency regime. “We have observed everything fluently, but if there are specific issues we invite you to report,” declared the head of the mission, Isabel de Saint Malo, who highlighted the high participation of Salvadorans residing abroad.

President Nayib Bukele, 42 years old and who appears as the great favorite, is the first ruler of the democratic stage of El Salvador to run for re-election. If he wins, he would be the first to repeat the position.

The path to Bukele’s re-election opened in 2021, when the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, which had been appointed by a Congress with a pro-government majority without following the legal procedure, changed the criteria for interpreting the Constitution.

The last precedent of a president seeking immediate re-election in El Salvador occurred under the dictatorship of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, who governed between 1931 and 1944.