Presidential Election in El Salvador (1972)

The presidential elections in El Salvador were held on February 20, 1972 ^[1] . As a result, Arturo Armando Molina Barraza , candidate of the National Coalition Party , won, receiving 43.4% of the vote.

← 1967 1977 →
Presidential Election in El Salvador
1972
February 20th
Candidate	Arturo Armando Molina Barrasa	Jose Napoleon Duarte
The consignment	National Coalition Party	National Union of Opposition ( CDA )
Votes	334 600 (43.42%)	324 756 (42.14%)
Election result	Arturo Armando Moline Barrasa elected president of El Salvador.

The elections were accompanied by massive fraud ^[2] . The National Coalition Party met with strong opposition, both left and right. As a result, she tried to persuade the elections in her favor by postponing the date of the presidential election two weeks before the parliamentary elections (held on March 12, 1972), so that in the absence of a majority vote for Molina, to secure a party majority in parliament that would approve him as president ^{[ 3]} . Despite ballot stuffing for Molina, for some time it seemed that the winner would be the candidate of the coalition National Opposition Union, which included the Christian Democratic Party , the National Revolutionary Movement, the Nationalist Democratic Union, José Napoleon Duarte , as the CEC announced that Duarte received 6 thousand votes more. However, after three days of silence, changed data was announced, according to which Molina won with a slight advantage ^[4] , which meant that the Legislative Assembly, where the National Coalition Party had the majority, had to decide who would take the presidency. When voting in parliament, the opposition left the hall, as a result of which Molina was elected by a majority of 31-0 ^[5] .