El Salvador populist holds lead weeks ahead of presidential vote

El Salvador populist holds lead weeks ahead of presidential vote
DECEMBER 13, 2018 / 1:39 PM / UPDATED 11 HOURS AGO
3 MIN READ

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - Nayib Bukele, the former mayor of El Salvador’s capital, has maintained his wide lead in the run-up to the Feb. 3, 2019, presidential election in the crime-ridden Central American country, according to a new poll released on Thursday.

Bukele, a 37-year-old businessman of the right-wing Great Alliance for National Unity party (GANA) has a 24-point advantage over his nearest rival with 44.1 percent of voter intentions, according to a poll conducted by Central American University (UCA).

His lead in polls marks the first time in three decades that a candidate from an outsider party has a real shot of winning the presidency.

“For the first time, the power held by two sides that were confronted in war and of two political (coalitions) that have taken turns in power since the peace accords is being challenged,” UCA Vice Chancellor Omar Serrano said.

More:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-el-salvador-politics-poll/el-salvador-populist-holds-lead-weeks-ahead-of-presidential-vote-idUKKBN1OC2OE?rpc=401&

Wikipedia definition of the Great Alliance for National Unity party:

Grand Alliance for National Unity (Spanish: Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional or GANA) is a political party in El Salvador. The party established itself on 16 January 2010[2] and was recognized by the Supreme Electoral Court of El Salvador on 19 May of the same year.[3] GANA is a conservative[4] and center-right politics party.[5] Nevertheless, it almost always forms a parliamentary coalition with the ruling leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).[4]

The majority of party members came from the ARENA. Originally the defection from ARENA included 12 deputies in the Legislative Assembly, but this number has grown to 16. GANA ranks third in seats in the assembly with 11, after the FMLN's 31 and the ARENA's remaining 28.[6] There have been accusations of ARENA members being bought or blackmailed by the GANA party in order to secure them in their party.[7][8][9] GANA has also been accused of multiple cases of corruption.[10][11][12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Alliance_for_National_Unity of the sadistic death squad leader, "Blow Torch" Bob

If you will recall, the Arena Party is the party founded by this monster in a human-sized body:

Roberto D'Aubuisson Arrieta (August 23, 1943 – February 20, 1992) was an extreme-right Salvadoran soldier, politician and death-squad leader. In 1981, he co-founded and became the first leader of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and served as President of El Salvador's Constituent Assembly from 1982 to 1983.[1][2][3] He was a candidate for President in 1984, losing in the second round to José Napoleón Duarte. After ARENA's loss in the 1985 legislative elections, he stepped down in favor of Alfredo Cristiani and was awarded the honorary post of party president for life.[4] He was named by the UN-created Truth Commission for El Salvador as having ordered the assassination of then-Archbishop Saint Oscar Romero in 1980.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_D%27Aubuisson

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The same people also organized a massacre of the thousands of people who came to mourn Archbishop Romero at a cathedral, shooting the bejesus out of them from buildings surrounding the plaza, while the people tried to run, and carry their wounded. There was an enormous number of shoes left behind on the ground by the people trying to escape, along with the people who didn't run fast enough.

~ ~ ~

Early life
D'Aubuisson was born to Roberto d'Aubuisson Andrade, a salesman of French roots, and Joaquina Arrieta Alvarado, a career civil servant, in Santa Tecla, La Libertad Department, El Salvador, graduating from the national military academy in 1963. He was part of La Tandona, the class of 1966 at the Escuela Militar. In 1972, he was trained in communications at the School of the Americas, a United States Department of Defense Institute that provides military training to government personnel in US-allied Latin American nations. After completing his studies at the Institute, he subsequently became a member of the Salvadoran military intelligence.[6][7]

Death squads
D'Aubuisson involved himself in death squad activity while in the military, and he became associated with the second death squad to emerge in El Salvador in the mid–1970s, called the White Warriors Union. In October 1979, after a group of progressive officers deposed the government of Carlos Humberto Romero in a coup d'état and established the Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG, 1979–1982), D'Aubuisson was forced out of military service for his death squad connections, although he continued working for senior military commanders secretly. D'Aubuisson was regularly featured on Salvadoran television denouncing alleged traitors and Communists, who were then murdered shortly afterwards by death squads.[8]

On May 7, 1980, six weeks after the assassination of Saint Óscar Romero, D'Aubuisson and a group of civilians and soldiers were arrested on a farm. The raiders found weapons and documents identifying D'Aubuisson and the civilians as death squad organizers and financiers, and of planning a coup d'état to depose the JRG.[9] D'Aubuisson was soon released from prison, after 8 of the 14 military garrison commanders voted for his release, overruling the JRG.[10]

His opposition to the JRG gave him international infamy. In August 1981 The Washington Post reported that D'Aubuisson "openly talked of the need to kill 200,000 to 300,000 people to restore peace to El Salvador". Shortly afterwards, on September 30, he founded ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance), an extreme right-wing political party. D'Aubuisson accumulated much political capital among Salvadorans for his anti-leftist stridency and for his reputation as an effective counter-insurgency strategist. He often accused the JRG of being a Marxist threat to El Salvador.[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_D%27Aubuisson






Blow Torch Bob D'Aubuisson



Roberto d'Aubuisson

Son of Blow Torch,
active in El Salvadoran
right-wing politics.

Images of the plaza outside the cathedral after the right-wing death squad, military attacked the mourners of Archbishop Romero:

https://tinyurl.com/y6v3zbuo