FMLN USA

El Salvador concludes an election considered transparent (ó El Salvador concludes a transparent election)

The Embassy of El Salvador in the United States reports that, after the run-off voting, held on March 9, 2014, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) concluded the official count, which showed the following results:

• FMLN : 50.11 % ( 1,495,815 votes)

ARENA : 49.89 % ( 1,489,451 votes)

Difference: 0.22 % ( 6,364 votes)

Disputed : 3,198 votes

Null : 19,579 votes

• A total of 3,008,043 Salvadorans casted their vote in the second round, while in the first round 2,741,074 people casted their votes. It is worth to mention that this situation is atypical, as in most runoff elections, the second round experiences a decrease rather than an increase in voting turnout.

• The 2014 presidential election has been a historic election for two reasons: first, it Salvadorans abroad were able to cast their vote, and is the election that has experienced the greater voting turnout.

With the provisional results, the TSE could not declare a new president-elect, since it can only do so after the final count. We hope that the TSE would declare a new president-elect in the next 48 hours, if no party submits resources.

The Ambassador of El Salvador to the United States, Ruben Zamora, highlighted the speed with which the results we publicly reported, both, the preliminary ones which were reported on the day of the election, and the final ones reported at the end of the official count. "This speaks highly of our system. Everything has been done under our legal framework and following the dictates of the Electoral Code. The provisional ballot was completed in less than six hours, the night of the election, and the final was completed within 43 hours, "said the diplomat.

"It is important to mention the presence of international observers who followed the electoral process thoroughly and who highlighted the transparency of the process," said Ambassador Zamora, who also mentioned the presence in the process of delegations from the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of American States (OAS), who issued a statements in which they described the process as reliable. Even the State Department of the United States‘ spokeswoman, Jean Psaki, acknowledged that international observers endorsed the Salvadoran elections, and made a call to complete the process peacefully.

The final count began on Tuesday March 11, 2014, when 23 tables began to review the 10,445 records. Each table consisted of: 4 members of every Departmental Electoral Board (2 per political party), 1 representative of each political party in contention, 1 delegate of the Attorney General's Office, 1 member of the Attorney’s office for the Defense of Human Rights (PDDH) and 1 member of the Board of Election Monitoring (JVE) of the contending parties.

Additionally, the official count was observed by four representatives of the Electoral Observation Mission of the Organization of American States (OAS), two of the European Union (EU) and the Embassy of the United States of America in El Salvador accredited four official who visited the counting tables.

The Embassy would like to clarify that the request for recounting every vote, made by one of the participating parties, is against Article 214 of the Electoral Code, which reads: "To the extent that the tribunal (TSE) receives the records and documents referred in previous article, it will proceed to the final count, in the manner it considers appropriate, taking as the sole the original closing records and the scrutiny of each of the polling stations. "

Moreover, the petition of the same party for the purposes of reviewing the challenged ballots also contradicts the Electoral Code, which establishes in Article 215 the following: "The court may only order the revision of ballots of one or more polling stations when the sum of the challenged ballots exceeds the outcome of the vote of the municipality or Department, so that they can to change the first outcome. "This time, the number of challenged votes (3,198 votes) is less than the difference between first and second place (6,364 votes).

We are convinced that this election represents a step forward in the institutionalization and consolidation of our representative democracy.

Source: El Salvador's Embassy in Washington, DC.