PARTY OF RIGHTIST EL SALVADOR PREXY WINS PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

The party of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele is projected to have won a majority of the seats in parliamentary elections, the electoral authority said on Monday (Tuesday, March 2, 2021, in Manila), Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported.

The preliminary results were released after more than 85 percent of the votes cast in Sunday's elections were counted. According to media estimates, the Nuevas Ideas party of the conservative head of state and government could achieve a two-thirds majority. Turnout among the 5 million eligible voters was 51 percent, the authority said.

The main parties, Arena and FMLN, currently hold a clear majority of the 84 seats in parliament, which consists of just one chamber.

The 39-year-old Bukele founded Nuevas Ideas after the left-wing FMLN expelled him in 2017 for insulting a party colleague when he was mayor of the capital, San Salvador.

However, the new party was not registered in time to run in the 2018 parliamentary election or to run a candidate in the 2019 presidential election.

As a candidate for the conservative Grand Alliance of National Unity (GANA), Bukele became the youngest head of state and government in the history of El Salvador and the first president since the end of the civil war from 1980 to 1992 not to belong to either Arena or FMLN.

He began his five-year term in June 2019 and his approval rating has hovered around 80 percent. However, critics see Bukele as a threat to democracy because of his authoritarian tendencies.

Bukele had soldiers deployed in parliament in February of last year in a bid to pressure lawmakers to approve the financing of his security plan.

Because his party has not yet been represented in parliament, it has so far been extremely difficult for him to get legislation in motion.

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