El Salvador’s ‘cool dictator’ attacks Spanish imperialism

NAYIB BUKELE, El Salvador’s millennial president, attacked Spanish colonialism and imperialism in a fiery speech after being re-elected in a landslide.

Amid claims he is turning the country into a dictatorship, he boasted to flag-waving crowds that El Salvador would be the first country with “a oneparty system in a democracy”. “The entire opposition was pulverised,” said Mr Bukele, who once styled himself as the “world’s coolest dictator”.

Mr Bukele, 42, has become vastly popular for his war on gangs, but he has also been accused of stifling the courts and silencing opposition.

In his speech he said a Spanish journalist had asked him why he wants to dismantle democracy. “I told him: what democracy are you talking about? Democracy means the power of the people, and if Salvadorans want this, who is a Spanish journalist to tell us what we should do?” Mr Bukele said.

He said the idea of democracy the journalist spoke to him about was “what his bosses tell him, there in Spain”, adding: “But that is not democracy; that would be colony, imperialism, elitism, plutocracy, you can call it whatever you want, but it is not called democracy.”

Early figures show Mr Bukele has won 85 per cent of the vote. In his first term, Mr Bukele used his huge majority to suspend civil liberties and jail 75,000 people without charges, reversing crime rates in a country that had one of the world’s worst murder rates.

Critics also accused Mr Bukele of stuffing state institutions with supporters, effectively creating a one-man state. El Salvador’s supreme electoral tribunal last year changed the law so Mr Bukele could run for a second term.

Mr Bukele counters that such criticism comes from outside El Salvador, from “liberal elites”.

Mr Bukele was congratulated on his victory by China, which has invested heavily in the country. Mr Bukele also championed the introduction of Bitcoin as legal tender and plans to build Bitcoin City, a tax-free crypto haven.

“We are not substituting democracy because El Salvador has never had democracy,” Mr Bukele added.