El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele Secures Supermajority Votes In Congress

Electoral officials in El Salvador announced Monday that President Nayib Bukele and his New Ideas party have officially secured the supermajority in Congress, which will allow him to govern the country without any trouble.

The announcement was made after a detailed vote-counting process, which sparked concerns from electoral watchdogs and the opposition party, which claimed irregularities in the process.

Bukele was re-elected as the president on Feb. 4 with 84.7% of overwhelming votes. However, the recent legislative elections were to decide whether his New Ideas party would get the same success.

Electoral officials disclosed that the New Ideas party secured 54 out of the 60 congressional seats, with three additional seats won by allied parties.

Even before the final results were announced, Bukele said, "El Salvador has broken all the records of all democracies in the entire history of the world. Never has a project won with the number of votes we have won today. It is literally the highest percentage in all of history," AP News reported.

However, now that the results are out, Bukele seems to live up to his X (formerly Twitter) bio, "world's coolest dictator," which he later changed to the "Philosopher King."

Following the results, a lawyer with the nongovernmental organization Citizen Action Eduardo Escobar said, "Now, he doesn't need any other party," explaining that before he sought support from allied parties.

The 42-year-old president has been serving the office since June 2019, but he temporarily stepped down as the president in November last year to run again for the second term. This was necessary because the country's Constitution does not allow a president to serve two consecutive terms. However, Supreme Court judges allowed Bukele to run for re-election, noting that his human right to run for office outweighed the Constitution's ban.

El Salvador has been dealing with a surge in gang fights, causing murders across the nation.

However, the country's Minister of Justice and Security Gustavo Villatoro said earlier this month that the number of homicides in the country declined by nearly 70% in 2023 due to Bukele's administration, as the government declared a state of emergency to fight criminal groups.