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Mr Bukele who branded Venezuela’s embattled President Nicolas Maduro a “dictator”, has come out top of polls after beginning the race as an outsider. The energetic young businessman who is seeking to end decades of a two-party system, is expected to win the top job on a campaign ticket to end corruption. Throughout his campaign he has been an outspoken critic of Mr Maduro, who continues to cling to power in Venezuela in the face of intense domestic and international pressure to step down and hand the presidency to Juan Guaido.

The former mayor of San Salvador, Mr Bukele, 37, has capitalised on the anti-establishment sentiment sweeping across the Central American region, as “fed up” voters seek an alternative to traditional parties. He was raised in a relatively wealthy family who were sympathetic to the FMLN, the former leftist guerrilla army that became a political party at the end of El Salvador's bloody civil war in 1992, after 75,000 people had died. But Mr Bukele has since turned his back on Latin America’s traditional left, branding Mr Maduro, as well as Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and conservative Honduran Juan Orlando Hernandez, dictators. He wrote in a tweet last week: "A dictator is a dictator, on the ‘right’ or the ‘left’.”

The former mayor of San Salvador has branded Venezuela's President Maduro a dictator

Mr Bukele has backed calls for embattled Venezuelan President Maduro to step down

Presidential hopeful Nayib Bukele throws candy at a parade in honour of San Salvador's patron saint

In an interview with the Associated Press last week, he said: “For us the government of Maduro is not a government that allows democratic plurality. "It does not allow for there to be a real opposition, and that is not democratic." As Salvadorans head to the polls on Sunday for the first round of the presidential election, the populist is well on track to be named leader of the region’s smallest country. With his slicked back hair and youthful style which often includes a backwards baseball cap, Mr Bukele has sought to mobilise younger voters with a large social media following, using Facebook Live for official announcements and challenging opponents on Twitter.

Mr Bukele has sought to appeal to young voters on social media

He built his campaign on a drive to create an international anti-corruption commission with the support of the United Nations, following similar schemes in Guatemala and Honduras. Mr Bukele said in January: "We'll create a (commission) ... so that the corrupt can't hide where they always hide, instead they'll have to give back what they stole.” Since the end of the war, El Salvador has been governed by just two parties: ruling leftists the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), and its rival, the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). ARENA has dominated four of the last six terms which have been marred by corruption.

President Maduro is facing intense pressure both at home and abroad to step down

While public anger against ARENA was on the rise, the FMLN was busy building up its electoral campaign capacity and in 2009 it won the presidency in coalition with the well-known independent journalist Mauricio Funes. Though he describes himself as from the left, and was expelled from the FMLN, Bukele has formed a coalition with parties including a right-wing one who together have just 11 seats in the legislature. Salvadorans are hoping their next leader can lead them out of widespread poverty and gang violence blighting their country. The next president will no doubt face a string of verbal attacks from Donald Trump aimed at Central American governments for not doing enough to prevent migration.

If elected, Mr Bukele will face the task of reducing gang violence in El Salvador