At 12:30 a.m. on March 1, the TSE had scrutinized less than 5% of the minutes.
The capital does not yet have an officially defined winner of the municipal elections, as at the close of this note (at 12:30 am on March 1) the Supreme Electoral Court had not yet scrutinized even 5% of the acts.
At this time none of the candidates most likely to win, Ernesto Muyshondt and Mario Durán, dared to declare themselves winners.
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With 15 of the 531 acts scrutinized, the New Ideas-Win coalition counted 494,000 and New Ideas 696,000 while ARENA accumulated 751,000 votes.
In the final stretch of the day, the mayor of the capital Ernesto Muyshondt, expressed concern over the Government’s action in the run-up to the vote, in which he aspires to his second term with the ARENA party.
However, during an evening conference he assured that “from now on we can say that the victory in San Salvador is ours; that we will win the capital again.”
Ernesto Muyshondt, mayor of San Salvador cast his vote at the Concha Vídua de Graó School. Twitter photos
The mayor was confident that people took into account the projects he was promoting despite the fact that, he warns, his management suffered the constant blockade by part of Executive officials.
Mario Durán, the candidate for the building chair for the New Ideas Party, also took for granted the victory in different messages reflected on his social networks throughout the day. In the evening, the party launched fireworks warning of the gain of the building chair, but later, at the party’s headquarters, supporters expected more significant data to mobilize. Until well into the night there was no glimpse of the preparation of any celebration of his candidate.
During the day, Durán told several journalists that he was sure of victory, but at night he showed caution in his posts on social media.
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For his part, Muyshondt said the election campaign was marred by the indiscriminate use of government resources and institutions.
In this context, in the morning he called on the government not to use the National Civil Police or the Armed Forces during the counting process, and in the afternoon he added a call to the international community to be vigilant.
“We call on the diplomatic corps, and on international observation, to the Attorney General’s Office also to be vigilant about how these next few hours unfold, especially after the polls close,” he insisted.
“I would expect them to respect, despite the results already tainted by the fraud they have generated, which has been coming for months,” he said.