El Salvador opposition requests repeat election for congress after irregularities in vote count

Opposition parties in El Salvador are calling for the nullification of the results of the country’s congressional elections. They have requested the election authority to redo the vote after a hand count of ballots revealed multiple irregularities.

Despite the constitutional ban on immediate re-election, President Nayib Bukele won a second term on Sunday, Feb. 4 when Salvadorans voted for president and Congress.

Bukele claimed that his New Ideas party had won 58 out of 60 seats, but the electoral body initiated a hand count of the vote due to reported irregularities, glitches, and power and internet outages in the voting system.

The hand count has confirmed Bukele’s win with almost 85% of the vote.

The final results for congress will be announced Monday night, with Bukele’s New Idea’s party holding onto its supermajority with 54 seats, solidifying his control over the country’s political system.

A supermajority in Congress would grant Bukele significant power, including the ability to change the country’s constitution and continue to curtail constitutional rights in his campaign against the country’s gangs, which has drawn criticism from human rights organizations.

The right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and National Concertion parties will each hold two seats, while the Christian Democratic and VAMOS parties will secure one seat each.

ARENA’s leaders and two emerging progressive parties, Nuestro Tiempo and VAMOS, documented 69 “anomalies” in the voting and vote-counting process on Monday.

This includes system failures, duplication and triplication of votes in favor of Bukele’s party, abandoned ballots in voting centers, and broken seals on packages containing votes.

An electoral mission from the Organization of American States (OAS) expressed concern about the delay in the vote count and problems in the hand count over the weekend.

The OAS observers noted the electoral body’s “lack of control” over the voting and vote count process, problems with vote authentication, and inadequate training of people entering results.

They also mentioned that Bukele’s New Ideas party had more election observers than the opposition and exhibited intimidating behavior towards the opposition and attempted to hamper the election observation mission and the press.

VAMOS deputy Claudia Ortiz stated that they are demanding the election results to be nullified and the vote to be repeated “due to serious violations of the Constitution, serious violations of citizen’s political rights and of all the candidates and especially because the principle of not falsifying the will of the people has been seriously violated.”

The leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) party also called for congressional results to be invalidated due to “fraud” and “manipulation,” according to congressional candidate Karina Sosa.

During his first term, Bukele used his New Ideas party’s congressional majority to appoint loyalists to courts and reform state institutions, enabling him to run for a second term despite a constitutional ban on re-election.

In June, the body passed electoral reforms that analysts and opponents say favored New Ideas. The reforms reduced the number of deputies, resulting in fewer seats for smaller parties, and altered the formula for how vote totals translate into allocated seats.

Under the new system, New Ideas candidates won 71% of the vote, yet they will hold 90% of the seats in congress.

(Reporting by Nelson Renteria and Sarah Kinosian; Writing by Sarah Kinosian; Editing by Chris Reese)