A victory announced: another 5 years as president for Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez (born 1981) who repeats his mandate as the highest office of the Salvadordespite the Constitution prevent explicitly immediate presidential re-election. An overwhelming result with the85% of votes in favor (result announced by himself before the official verdict of the Electoral Tribunal) which ridicules the other 5 presidential candidates, sanctioned by the vote of 6 million people in Salvador and more than 700 thousand living outside the country.
According to our numbers, we have won the presidential election with more than 85% of the votes and a minimum of 58 of 60 deputies in the Assembly.
The record in the entire democratic history of the world.
See you at 9pm in front of the National Palace.
God bless El Salvador.
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) February 5, 2024
An avalanche of preferences (in 2019 he was elected with 53%) which accounts for the great popularity of Bukele, who has kept El Salvador in one since March 2022 state of exceptionwhich in fact suspends many constitutional freedoms. The “coolest dictator in the world” – as he ironically nicknamed himself on X (formerly Twitter) – embodied the false dilemma that leads to choosing between security and rights, militarizing the country in a frontal war against the criminal organizations that kept it in check. An operation he baptized “guerra a las pandillas” and which led him to be emulated and praised in various parts of the Latin American region.
Today the Maras (the name used to refer to organized crime in El Salvador) have been disjointed and the small Central American state is experiencing an unprecedented period of time low rate of generalized violence and murders, far from the top places of these special rankings where it had been at the top for years (where Ecuador stands out today). Tens of thousands of people have ended up in prison, with arbitrary and preventive detentions, in a context of terror where only a tattoo (distinctive signs of the pandilleros, members of the maras) or a suspicion can lead to entering prison and receiving sentences up to 40 years.
Structures such as the Confinement Center for Terrorism (Cecot), built in just 7 months and already made history for being the largest prison on the American continent, with a maximum capacity of 40 thousand inmates. A symbol of the change that brought the bukelizationa catharsis well told in this documentary entitled “El Salvador de Bukele”.
But for Bukele the point was not only to be re-elected as President, but also to be able to maintain his party New ideas with the qualified majority in parliament (as he himself explains in this video). That majority that allowed him to extend the state of exception, appoint the nation’s attorney general ad personam and choose the magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice. The same magistrates (close to Bukele) who right in 2023 have issued a sentence announcing a change of criteria in the interpretation of the constitutional provision which prevented immediate re-election, change favorable to Bukele’s aspirations to run for a second term. And so Bukele continued his strategy, obtaining a leave of absence (together with his vice-president Félix Ulloa) from the congress of deputies (controlled by his party) which allowed him to be absent from his presidential office. 3 months earlier of the elections. In his place, how Chairwoman interim secretary of El Salvador (not elected but directly chosen by Bukele in compliance with article 155 of the Constitution) his personal secretary, Claudia Juana Rodríguezwho has been working with him since the days when Nayib was “only” mayor for two terms (2012-2015) of the small town of Nuevo Cuscatlán, approximately 8 thousand inhabitants.
Human rights defenders, NGOs (such as Cristosal which reports deaths in prisonsforced disappearances and abusive and arbitrary detentions, including of minors) and journalists are at the center of presidential rhetoric, guilty according to the leader of Nuevas Ideas of disinformare citizenship and of wanting to “put a spoke in the wheels” of a revolution that Bukele defended just 4 months ago at the UN, in a speech in which he took stock of the transformation of the Central American country in just a few years. A wizard of social networks, Bukele, who managed to get through under the radar the failure of the adoption of Bitcoin as the country’s official currency (September 2021) and the failure to take off of Bitcoin City, a project announced with great fanfare in May 2022 but still on the high seas.
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Bukele, “quiet dictator”, still bewitches El Salvador
Social media used to attack political opponents, appoint public offices and carry out a constant electoral campaign which, however, almost never places emphasis on the real economic problems of the country, where despite the disappearance of the Maras, emigration remains the only option for many people. Emigrate as the historic national newspaper had to do The lighthouseexiled in Costa Ricaafter threats, retaliation and after discovering that he had done it spied on by the State with the “Pegasus” system of the Israeli Nso group.
With Bukele’s re-election, the words of those who point to him as the man of the new era in Latin America, a modern leader which has erected, by popular acclaim, one militarized autocracy on the ruins of the desolate and battered Salvadoran democracy, where the opposition is on the verge of extinction.