Ernesto Luis Muyshondt García Prieto (born 30 August 1975) is a Salvadoran businessman, politician and member of the

Nationalist Republican Alliance The Nationalist Republican Alliance (, abbreviated ARENA) is a conservative, center-right to right-wing political party of El Salvador. It was founded on 30 September 1981 by retired Salvadoran Army Major Roberto D'Aubuisson. It defines itse ...

(ARENA) party. He served as the mayor of

San Salvador San Salvador () is the Capital city, capital and the largest city of El Salvador and its San Salvador Department, eponymous department. It is the country's largest agglomeration, serving as the country's political, cultural, educational and fin ...

, the capital and largest city in El Salvador, from 2018 to 2021. He was previously a deputy of the

Legislative Assembly of El Salvador The Legislative Assembly () is the legislative branch of the government of El Salvador. History The organization was founded in 1824 as the Central American Congress (). Structure The Salvadoran legislature is a unicameral body. Until ...

from 2015 until 2018.

Biography

In 2017, incumbent San Salvador Mayor

Nayib Bukele Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez (; born 24 July 1981) is a Salvadoran politician and businessman who has served as the 81st president of El Salvador since 2019. In 1999, Bukele established an advertising company and worked at an advertising com ...

was expelled from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) 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 choose a new Mayor of San Salvador. The right-wing

(ARENA) selected Ernesto Muyshondt, a deputy in the Legislative Assembly, as its candidate. The ruling FMLN, which had held the mayor's office until it expelled Bukele from the party, chose Jackeline Rivera, a National Assembly deputy from Cuscatlán and former child soldier during the

Salvadoran Civil War The Salvadoran Civil War () was a twelve-year civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador, backed by the United States, and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of left-wing guer ...

, as its candidate for mayor. Observers believed that Muyshondt had the edge in the race. Muyshondt easily defeated Rivera in the mayoral election on 4 March 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 as Mayor of San Salvador on 1 May 2018. In the legislative elections, held in February 2021, Muyshondt lost re-election for the Mayor of San Salvador against the candidate of Nuevas Ideas, Mario Durán. On 4 June 2021, he was placed under

house arrest House arrest (also called home confinement, or nowadays electronic monitoring) is a legal measure where a person is required to remain at their residence under supervision, typically as an alternative to imprisonment. The person is confined b ...

on suspicions of electoral fraud and illegal negotiations with gangs. On 6 June 2022, during a hearing against him, Muyshondt stated on the record that he had been so severely beaten in Mariona prison on three occasions that he had to be taken to hospital due to acute danger to his life. He was hospitalized in January 2023 following a "prolonged

hunger strike A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance where participants fasting, fast as an act of political protest, usually with the objective of achieving a specific goal, such as a policy change. Hunger strikers that do not take fluids are ...

". On 9 August, Muyshondt was acquitted by the Public Prosecution Service of the charge of embezzling taxpayers' money from sanitation workers, but the Attorney General's Office appealed against this verdict. On 19 October 2023, the legal deadline for Muyshondt to be released from prison was set to expire. On 19 October 2023, the legal deadline for Muyshondt to be released after two years in prison without a conviction was due to expire. One day before this deadline expired, on 18 October 2023, he was transferred to a psychiatric hospital. No public reasons were given for the measure. A report on Muyshondt's state of health requested by the psychiatric court at the end of October 2023 was still not available at the end of 2023.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Muyshondt, Ernesto Living people 1975 births Mayors of San Salvador Members of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador Nationalist Republican Alliance politicians José Matías Delgado University alumni