(MENAFN- The Peninsula) AP
Mejicanos: Salvadorans are voting Sunday in presidential and legislative elections that are largely about the tradeoff between security and democracy.
With soaring approval ratings and virtually no competition, Nayib Bukele is almost certainly headed for a second term as president.
El Salvador's constitution prohibits reelection. Nonetheless, about eight out of 10 of voters support Bukele, according to a January poll from the University of Central America.
That's despite Bukele taking steps throughout his first term that lawyers and critics say chip away at the country's system of checks and balances.
José Dionisio Serrano, 60, was proud to be the first person in line at 6 a.m. Sunday as voters started to line up outside a school in the formerly gang-controlled neighborhood of Zacamil in Mejicanos just north of San Salvador.
The soccer teacher said he planned to vote for Bukele and his party New Ideas.
"We need to keep changing, transforming,” Serrano said.
"Honestly, we have lived through very hard periods in my life. As a citizen I have lived through periods of war, and this situation we had with the gangs. Now we have a big opportunity for our country. I want the generations that are coming up to live in a better world,” he added.
He has lived in Mejicanos most of his life, but had to flee for several years after gang members shot him and threatened his life. Asked about concerns that Bukele was seeking reelection despite a constitutional ban, he brushed it aside, saying, "What the people want is something else.”
Moisés Zaldivar, preparing to vote in his first election, said he supported Bukele's New Ideas party.
"This is a change I've never seen,” he said. "I'm only 19 years old and this is the first time I've seen such a radical change in the country. So I want to support this great project the party and the president have.”
El Salvador's traditional parties from the left and right that created the vacuum that Bukele first filled in 2019 remain a shambles.
Alternating in power for some three decades, the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) were thoroughly discredited by their own corruption and inefficacy.
Their presidential candidates this year are polling in the low single digits.
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