El Salvador Presidental Elections 2014: Electoral Council Calls Salvador Sánchez Cerén Lead ‘Irreversible’

La Jornada reports that Eugenio Chicas, head of El Salvador’s electoral council, said on Monday afternoon that as the last votes were tallied in the country’s presidential elections, the lead of leftist candidate Salvador Sánchez Cerén had become “irreversible”. Chicas added that the final tally – and the official declaration of the results – would likely not come for a few days, but said that with 100 percent of polling stations reporting, the current vice president and ex-guerrilla leader during the 1980-92 civil war had garnered 50.11 percent of votes, compared to the 49.89 percent won by conservative candidate Norman Quijano, a difference of less than 6,700 votes.

"We put our technical teams to work all night, which is why I can tell you with certainty that the result of this election is irreversible," said Chicas before calling the election results “credible, transparent, legitimate and legal”. The Organization of American States (OAS) praised the electoral process, while Nicanor Moscoso, the president of a Latin American election-review board, said at a press conference that the board had not observed “even up close, the possibility of fraud”.

But Quijano, refused to concede, writing on his Twitter account, “By our count, I come out as President Elect.” He also demanded a vote-by-vote recount presided over by the national attorney general and international observers and televised “so that the Salvadorian people can pay witness to it” and pledging to accept the result of the recount. As a candidate with the Nationalist Republic Alliance (ARENA), Quijano had rapidly closed the gap between he and Sánchez Cerén – the favorite by about 10 points after the first round of voting – in part by reminding voters of violence in Venezuela, whose government has close ties with the ruling Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party in El Salvador.