SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- A former mayor of El Salvador's capital claimed victory in Sunday's presidential election, winning more votes than his two closest rivals combined to end a quarter-century of two-party dominance in the Central American nation.
The Supreme Electoral Court declared Nayib Bukele the winner, saying he had nearly 54 percent of the votes with nearly 90 percent of ballots counted. Carlos Callejas of the Nationalist Republican Alliance was far behind in second, with less than 32 percent. Even further back were former Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and a minor-party candidate.
Bukele surpassed the 50 percent needed to avoid a March runoff, according to the electoral court, and he had already claimed victory before a jubilant crowd in the capital and invited supporters to celebrate in the streets.
"We have full certainty that we have won the presidency, and we have won in the first round," Bukele said.
All four candidates promised to end corruption, stamp out gang violence and create more jobs, with crushing crime at the top of the agenda. Roughly 67,000 Salvadorans belong to gangs, which terrorize communities with extortion, murder and other forms of violence.
Bukele, 37, made his political debut in 2012 as a small-town mayor with the now-ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and won election in the capital three years later, automatically making him a potential presidential contender. But his frequent criticism of the leftist party's leadership led to his expulsion, and he wound up as the standard-bearer of a small conservative party known as the Grand Alliance for National Unity, whose initials -- GANA -- spell "win" in Spanish.
The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and the conservative Alliance, known as ARENA, have dominated Salvadoran politics since a 1992 peace deal that ended a brutal civil war. But both parties have been stained by corruption scandals, and neither has been able to stem gang violence.
"I came to vote because I want the country to change, because we are tired of so much corruption," said Estela Henriquez, 27, at a polling place in the capital.
El Salvador is small both in size and population, with 6.5 million people. Close to a third of its households live in poverty, and the World Bank says per-capita income is $3,560.
Salvadorans searching for a better life have joined recent caravans of migrants trekking through Mexico toward the U.S.
A Section on 02/04/2019