Ex-mayor wins El Salvador's presidential race, ends two-party dominance
Iran Press TV
Mon Feb 4, 2019 06:38AM
Nayib Bukele, an ex-mayor of El Salvador's capital, wins a landslide victory in the presidential race on an anti-graft ticket, putting an end to decades of two-party dominance in the crime-stricken Central American state.
The 37-year-old former mayor of San Salvador from the Grand Alliance for National Unity party won 54 percent of the votes cast in Sunday's election, with returns from 88 percent of polling stations, said Julio Olivo, head of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
Right-wing Carlos Callejas of the Nationalist Republican Alliance was far behind in the second place, with less than 32 percent. He was followed by leftist Martinez of the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation.
Olivo further said the final results would be released in two days, but Bukele's two rivals have already conceded defeat.
The result ended nearly three decades of the two-party system dominating El Salvador's political scene.
Addressing his supporters, Bukele said, "At this moment we can announce with total certainty that we have won the presidency."
Bukele, who was campaigning on an anti-corruption platform, has pledged to restore security to the country, increase investment in education and fight graft by forming an international anti-corruption commission with the support of the United Nations.
"We'll create a (commission) ... so that the corrupt can't hide where they always hide, instead they'll have to give back what they stole," Bukele said in January.
El Salvador's new president will sit at the helm of a country trapped in extreme poverty and gang violence.
The country is small both in size and population, with just 6.5 million people. Close to a third of its households live in poverty, according to the World Bank.
An estimated 67,000 Salvadorans belong to gangs that terrorize their communities with extortion, murder and other forms of violence.
The dire conditions have triggered an outflow of El Salvadorans, many of whom have joined recent caravans of migrants trekking through Mexico toward the US in search of a better life.
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