Presidential elections began in El Salvador, with emphasis on insecurity and economic stagnation

Polling stations opened in El Salvador Sunday at 07:00 local time (13:00 GMT), for the celebration of the presidential elections, during which citizens will choose who will govern the country for the next five years a strong focus on the country. insecurity and economic stagnation.

In the race they face each other Hugo Martínez, for the Front for National Liberation (FMLN) Farabundo Martí in power; Carlos Calleja, with the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena); the favorite Nayib Bukele, of the Great Alliance for National Unity (GANA) and Joshua Alvarado, with the party Vamos, of recent foundation.

"Today we celebrate a civic festival", said the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Julio Olivo, during the opening of the vote, in a message on national radio and television in which he had called to "go out to vote".

The process is done as part of stringent security measures and observation of the European Union (EU) and the Organization of American States (OAS), so that just over 5.2 million voters go to the 1,595 voting centers

Bukele, 37, is leading all polls, followed by business man Carlos Calleja supermarkets (42).

In the event that Bukele succeeds in imposing it, he would have to agree on an alliance to be able to govern with the law that dominates the current Congress, in office until 2021.

Whoever wins, he will have to deal with the problem of insecurity in a country with a homicide rate of 51 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the continent, and the stagnation of an economy thatIt has only increased by 3% in the last five years.

This is the sixth presidential election since the end of the civil war (1980-1992)., in which the Salvadorians will choose the successor of Sánchez Cerén, the first former guerrilla commander to have ruled the country and leave the executive on 1 June.

This Sunday in El Salvador are the first elections of the busy schedule of Latin America for 2019, when Guatemalans, Bolivians, Argentineans and Uruguayans also go to the polls.

With information from EFE and AFP