SAN SALVADOR – Populist President Nayib Bukele appeared Monday to have won control of El Salvador’s unicameral congress, ending a two-year standoff with legislators of the old parties that have dominated politics in the Central American country since the end of the 1980-1992 civil war.
Bukele, 39, celebrated, writing, “Our people have waited 40 years for this.” A preliminary count of about 80% of votes from Sunday’s elections showed Bukele’s New Ideas party and a coalition partner won several times as many votes as the established political parties, the conservative National Republican Alliance and the leftist Farabundo Marti Liberation Front.