The current mayor said that on Tuesday they submitted letters to the EST for the revision of 17 contested votes, which could change the result.
Arcatao, one of the municipalities of the FMLN strongholds, is about to fall, politically, into the hands of the New Ideas party, as explained by the current mayor, José Alberto Avelar, who manages that Salvadoran border for three consecutive terms.
Avelar told El Diario de Hoy yesterday that, depending on the number of votes cast at the end of election day, the difference is one vote in favor of new ideas.
The hope of reversing that defeat is based on 17 votes that were classified as contested. The candidate on whom FMLN bet is not Avelar, the current mayor, but Bladimir Orellana.
Following this disagreement, they submitted a letter to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) on Tuesday, requesting a review of those votes.
The last hope the leaders have is that, after this review, the result will favor the Front, Avelar said.
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For this reason, yesterday shortly before noon, the mayor said, EST did not give the final results of that municipality.
However, by mid-afternoon, the website created by the TSE to get real-time information about the preliminary election results indicated an advantage for New Ideas over the FMLN. The new ideas got 819 votes, one more than the Front.
Municipal data indicate that in Arcatao, the electoral list is 2,680 voters, of whom about 1,500 usually voted; but in the recent election, the mayor estimates that 1,650 voted.
DATES AND NUMBERS
VOTES: According to the preliminary vote, the New Ideas party would have won Arcatao City Hall with one vote.
“Ideology is not lost”
Avelar does not consider that the volume of votes obtained by the New Ideas means that the Front has lost supporters in the municipality or that the ideology has been lost among them.
Avelar says he is certain that his party’s tough vote remains intact and that the party that lost its voters was the National Republican Alliance party, ARENA.
The ARENA party had a fortress in Arcatao, according to Avelar. This was the Teosinte canton, a place that was repopulated by paramilitaries or former patrols. A polling station with about 900 voters has always been installed.
Traditionally, says the mayor, ARENA got 400 votes in that place, but this time it got only 10, and FMLN lost 60 votes.
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The official goes further in his remarks: he considers that the flow of votes received by the New Ideas was due to the million-dollar campaign orchestrated by the central government and the purchase of wills.
Avelar claims that there were people who were paid $ 50 to vote for NI.
“It is thinking of gathering all the evidence that can be presented to the Prosecutor’s Office, in order to create a precedent. Even on election day, they distributed their tickets so that they could claim a box or a half box of eggs (30 or 15 units) “, he said.
Chichilco effect
Arcatao is the birthplace of Maria Ofelia Navarrete de Dubón, better known as María Chichilco, a pseudonym she used as a fighter and leader of the People’s Liberation Forces (FPL) during the armed conflict.
Currently, the former guerrilla commander is the minister of local development, and in the presidential elections that brought Nayib Bukele to the presidential seat, Chichilco also supported him.
Avelar admits that there are people in the municipality who respect Chichilco and there is no doubt that she, as a community leader, has also influenced the results.
However, Avelar continues to hope that the TSE must resolve the contested votes at their request. “It should be done for health,” he said.