El Salvador’s leader, combative but popular, may tighten grip in elections

In his first two years in office, El Salvador’s president marched soldiers into the country’s legislature, defied Supreme Court rulings, published photos of barely clothed gang members crammed together on a prison floor and dispatched the military to detain anyone breaking quarantine.

Salvadorans cannot get enough of him. President Nayib Bukele, who enjoys an approval rating around 90% in polls, is expected to expand his mandate even further in legislative elections that could deliver a decisive victory to his party.

The vote could also endow Bukele with sweeping new powers: control over a legislature that has been dominated by the opposition, along with the chance to begin changing the constitution and, possibly, to remake the government in his image. If his party and its allies win two-thirds of the seats, they can replace the attorney general and appoint new Supreme Court justices.

In an interview, Bukele’s vice president, Felix Ulloa, acknowledged that some of the president’s actions had been questionable.

“The president has had some outbursts,” Ulloa conceded, “but they should be understood as such, as outbursts, as errors, and not as a trend, as an attitude, as the birth of a new dictatorship.”

Bukele’s tendency toward confrontation will be tempered, Ulloa said, once he has a legislature that is not determined to block his agenda. He invited the world to take measure of the president based on how he governs after the election.

Part of what has drawn attention to Bukele is his approach, which can only be described as very online. A 39-year-old self-styled political outsider, the president uses social media to trash El Salvador’s press, attack the attorney general and declare his refusal to abide by Supreme Court rulings.