“According to our numbers, we won the presidential election with more than 85% of the votes and a minimum of 58 of the 59 deputies” in parliament, said Bukele, around 1 am this Monday in Lisbon
“A record in the entire democratic history of the world”, added the 42-year-old head of state, on the social network X.
The Superior Electoral Court of El Salvador only began publishing partial and preliminary results two hours later, around 300 today in Lisbon.
With around a third (31.5%) of polling stations counted, Bukele and the country’s vice-president, Félix Ulloa, from the Novas Ideias party, had obtained almost 1.3 million votes, well ahead of Farabundo Martí , from the left-wing National Liberation Front, with 110 thousand votes.
The historic Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena, right) was in third, with around 97 thousand votes.
Congratulations from neighboring countries
The president of neighboring Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, who took office on January 15, congratulated Bukele, saying that “the Salvadoran people chose and made their will heard”, and promised to cooperate with El Salvador to “advance peace and in development”.
In the other neighboring country, Honduras, the president, Xiomara Castro, said that “(Bukele’s) firm commitment to the security of the Salvadoran people spoke loudly at the polls” and wished him “success in his new mandate.”
China has also congratulated Bukele on “a historic victory” and made itself “available to strengthen ties of friendship and bilateral cooperation between the two countries”, according to the Chinese embassy in San Salvador.
El Salvador established diplomatic relations with China in 2018, shortly after severing ties with Taiwan.
Bukele is the first president of El Salvador’s democratic era to win re-election. However, he will legally be the first of two possible terms, after a controversial change, in 2021, to a criterion for interpreting the Constitution.