El Salvador's electoral authority announced on Monday (19) that President Nayib Bukele's ruling New Ideas party will have a supermajority in the next legislature with 54 of the 60 seats, after a manual vote count.
On Monday, opposition parties asked the body to annul the results of the February 4 parliamentary elections and redo the vote after the manual vote count revealed several irregularities.
However, the electoral authority is unlikely to agree to the request.
A few hours after the polls closed, Bukele declared himself the winner of the presidential election and his party victorious in the vote for Congress.
Although he claimed at the time that the party had won 58 of 60 seats, El Salvador's electoral body began a manual vote count in the days that followed after declaring a flaw in the voting system. The statement came after numerous reports of irregularities, errors and power and internet outages.
On Sunday, electoral authorities confirmed Bukele's landslide victory with almost 85% of the votes and, on Monday, Novas Ideias controlled 54 seats.
The supermajority in Congress gives Bukele unprecedented power, including allowing him to change the country's Constitution and continue to suspend constitutional rights in his popular crackdown on gangs, which has drawn criticism from rights groups.
The Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) and National Concertation parties will have two seats each and the Christian Democratic and VAMOS parties will have one seat each.
Source: CNN Brasil
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