The images of the solemn ceremony on Thursday evening, in which Angela Merkel received military honors from the German army for the end of her post as political leader of the country, went around the world and even reached Central America. Even in El Salvador, where, according to the despotic head of state Nayib Bukele, they showed the face of a dictatorship.
“The uniforms, the flaming torches, the colors, the helmets … 16 years in power”, tweeted the Salvadoran head of state commenting on the Reuters report on the “Zapfenstreich”, as the ceremony held in Berlin is called .
And he added “But the dictatorship is El Salvador” with the smiley face emoji. The “Zapfenstreich” is the highest award of the German Armed Forces, reserved for presidents of the republic, chancellors and defense ministers for the end of a post. A similar ceremony was recently held in front of the Reichstag to pay homage to the German army’s mission in Afghanistan. Bukele has been head of state and government of the Central American nation for two and a half years.
Several international human rights organizations have begun to warn against his way of governing: “he has declared the hunt open for independent journalists, lawyers, human rights activists and anyone who dared to criticize him or the policies of his administration. The campaign started online, where he slandered their work, ”wrote Astrid Valencia, a Salvadoran researcher at Amnesty International on Wednesday.
Social media is a favorite battleground for millennials who show up for work in skinny jeans and a baseball cap, who won the presidential election in February 2019 with 53% of the vote, riding on popular anger over corruption by meme. and the incompetence of traditional ruling parties.
3 million followers on Instagram (almost half of the Salvadoran population), 2.3 on TikTok, Bukele up to a few weeks in the biography on Twitter called himself “the coolest dictator in the world“. How much he was joking, no one knows.
Jeanne Perego