Ernesto Muyshondt
Ernesto Luis Muyshondt García-Prieto is a Salvadoran businessman, politician and member of the Nationalist Republican Alliance party. He has served as the Mayor of San Salvador, the capital and largest city in El Salvador, since May 1, 2018. He was previously a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador from 2015 until 2018.
In 2017, incumbent San Salvador Mayor Nayib Bukele was expelled from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front party. In response, Bukele announced that he would seek a new political party and run for president in the 2019 Salvadoran presidential election.
The political upheaval came less than six months before the 2018 Salvadoran municipal elections, when voters would chose a new San Salvador mayor.
The right-leaning Nationalist Republican Alliance selected Muyshondt, a deputy in the Legislative Assembly, as its candidate. The ruling FMLN, which had held the mayor's office until it expelled Nayib Bukele from the party, chose Jackeline Rivera, a National Assembly deputy from Cuscatlán Department and former child soldier during the Salvadoran Civil War, as its candidate for mayor. Observers believed that Muyshondt had the edge in the race. Muyshondt easily defeated Rivera in the mayoral election on March 4, 2018. Muyshondt received 88,194 votes, or 61.2%, while Rivera placed a distant second with 39,736 votes, or 27.61%.
Muyshondt was inaugurated Mayor of San Salvador on May 1, 2018.
