San Salvador

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El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele was declared the winner of Sunday's general election in a landslide, claiming about 80 per cent of the preliminary vote, the news agency Reuters reported. Bukele, 42, was the favourite to win another five-year term as voters largely cast aside concerns about the erosion of democracy to reward him for a fierce gang crackdown that improved security in the country. 

During the election, Bukele campaigned on the success of the gang crackdown under which authorities suspended civil liberties to arrest over 75,000 Salvadorans without charges.

The arrests led to a sharp decline in nationwide murder rates. On Sunday, Bukele cast his ballot at a voting centre on one of the capital San Salvador's main avenues before giving a press conference.

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'We have already overcome our cancer'

"So, if we have already overcome our cancer, with metastases that were the gangs, now we only have to recover and be the person we always wanted to be," Bukele told reporters and urged citizens to cast their votes. 

In a separate rally on Sunday, Bukele said, "In all the history of the world, since the existence of democracy, never has a project won with the quantity of votes that we have won. Literally, it's the highest percentage in all of history. The highest difference between first and second place in history."

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"They (media) say that Salvadorans are oppressed, that Salvadorans don't want the emergency measures, that Salvadorans are afraid of the government. Let God tell the journalists to accompany us on this night of total freedom and total security, here in the safest country of the Western hemisphere. Don't be scared of me. I'm just a politician, an official. Believe in the Salvadoran people," he added.

"We are on the cusp of winning the war against the gangs. Literally, we went from being, it's not an exaggeration, it's not a hyperbole, literally we went from being the most dangerous country in the world to being the most secure in all of the Western hemisphere," the president further said.

Bukele defends crime policy

President Bukele called on voters to back his hardline stance against crime and vowed to keep up the fight against gangs. 

He also hit back at critics of his crime policy, saying he was "baffled" by accusations from foreign media regarding the arrests of innocents by the Salvadoran police.

(With inputs form agencies)