Bukele takes aim at critics ahead of second presidential term
SAN SALVADOR (AP): EL SALVADOR’S President Nayib Bukele is savouring what appears to be a landslide re-election victory, and is railing against his international critics and the press. The populist leader has declared himself a harbinger of democracy, not the case study for 21st century autocracy that some fear.
Bukele told thousands of cheering supporters Sunday night that El Salvador hasn’t known democracy until now, though he acknowledged that his vision of that ideal is distinct from the norm.
“It will be the first time in a country that just one party exists in a completely democratic system,” Bukele said, adding that “the entire opposition together was pulverised”.
Bukele will be El Salvador’s first re-elected president, following Sunday’s election. His party’s majority in congress and a friendly court they stacked allowed him to dodge a constitutional ban.
By Monday, Bukele had 83 per cent of the vote against seven per cent from his nearest competitor with ballots from about 71 per cent of polling stations tallied in a troubled process plagued by glitches, according to preliminary data from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
‘COOLEST DICTATOR’
Bukele describes himself as the “world’s coolest dictator”, and his firm grip on power was only expected to strengthen. He predicted his New Ideas party would win an even larger congressional majority, but Monday the ballots from only five per cent of polling places had been tallied.
If true, analysts say the leader would be able to continue his controversial crackdown on the gangs and potentially reform the country’s constitution – a move already proposed by his government once before – to stay in power.
Bukele’s victory lap was met with a roar from the crowd donning T-shirts, scarves, hats, puppets, masks and life-size cardboard cutouts emblazoned with his face. But others say the Central American nation is headed down a dangerous path that could corrode democracy and trickle out to the rest of the region.
“There’s no going back,” said Eduardo Escobar, lawyer and director of the non-governmental organisation Citizen Action. “This election signifies the consolidation of an authoritarian model of government in El Salvador, ratified by the people.”
The 42-year-old Bukele has repeatedly raised democratic alarms throughout his presidency, accused of stacking courts with loyalists and tinkering with Salvadoran law to concentrate power in his own hands. That continues to be a concern for some as he is set to be sworn in to his second term on June 1.
But he’s also adored by many Salvadorans because his government’s controversial crackdown on the country’s gangs sharply dropped violence in what a decade ago was one of the most dangerous countries in the world.
HIGHLIGHT OF CAMPAIGN
Highly popular, the “state of emergency” was the highlight of campaign messaging, and something Bukele promised to continue, despite originally only being a temporary measure when the firebrand began his gang crackdown nearly two years ago. Under the emergency, officials have detained more than 76,000 people – more than one per cent of El Salvador’s population – often with very little evidence and little access to due process.
Gabriel Gomez, 44, was among the more than 1.6 million people who voted for Bukele. Walking out of a voting station on Sunday in the formerly gang-controlled area of Mejicanos, he said that, even with constitutional concerns, he’d rather live under Bukele’s emergency measures.
He accused El Salvador’s traditional parties – the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance and leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front – of having “walked all over the constitution” before Bukele came to power. Thoroughly discredited by their own corruption and ineffectiveness, those parties have scooped up just a miniscule percentage of the votes.