SAN SALVADOR – Saúl Meléndez, a former fighter during El Salvador’s civil war, was for years a loyal member of the leftist political party formed by his fellow ex-guerrillas after the war.
But Meléndez has now won his first elected office — not with them, but as a member of President Nayib Bukele’s New Ideas party.
The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front — the party Meléndez left in 2015 and that expelled Bukele in 2017 — suffered a drubbing in February's national elections.
Some question whether with its four remaining federal legislators, down from 23 before the election, the FMLN can even survive.