Will El Salvador become another Venezuela?
Will El Salvador become another Venezuela?
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Global Research, March 27, 2014
Inspired by the US-backed anti-government protests in Venezuela, El Salvador’s oligarchs are preparing to follow the same strategy.
~snip~
Sánchez beat the ARENA candidate, Norman Quijano, by a narrow 0.22 percent according to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal of El Salvador. He got 50.11 percent of the vote, while Quijano got 49.89 percent of the vote.
I had the benefit of being present in El Salvador as an international observer and election monitor. I was able to see the process up close and observe how both sides conducted themselves. I monitored the presidential elections on February 2, 2014; the voting in February would become the first round of the presidential election, because Señores Sánchez and Ortíz got 48.93 percent of the popular vote. They needed at least 50 percent to win the election without a second round taking place.
The second round duly took place March 9.
As a tactic, ARENA tried to annul as many votes as possible during the first round of voting. One example is the case of the out-of-country ballots that ARENA had nullified on the basis of a technicality; many Salvadorian voters had mailed their second-round ballots instead of their first-round ballots. Despite the fact that the electoral choice of the out-of-country Salvadorian voters was clear, ARENA worked to have their ballots nullified due to their voting preference for the FMLN.
It is noteworthy that ARENA lost the presidential elections in 2009 even though it cheated. Former election observers accounted how the Salvadorian mayors belonging to ARENA were issuing false Salvadorian identification cards to foreign citizens who were brought into El Salvador by bus from other Central American countries.
More:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/will-el-salvador-become-another-venezuela/5375550
= new reply since forum marked as read
