2024-02-04 22:34:18
Surrounded by hundreds of followers, Nayib Bukele arrived at the voting center installed on Olympic Avenue. He smiled the smile of someone singing his victory before the polls opened. If the 6.2 million citizens able to vote (740,000 of them abroad) knew something, it is that the result was written in advance. Bukele, champion of the iron fist, the executing arm of a ruthless policy against crime that has put 71,000 people in jail, completed his electoral process and once again greeted those who experienced it as a born winner of the contest. A virtually re-elected president.
International observers detected a “relatively normal development” of the electoral process. The ‘normality’ was also marked by a general acceptance of the facts. The polls prior to the elections gave the president an overwhelming advantage over the other five competing parties. Manuel ‘Chino’ Flores, of the leftist Frente Farabundo Martí for National Liberation (FMLN), Bukele’s immediate follower in the polls, appeared at a distance of up to 75 points.
The elections were marked by the sign of the institutional anomaly. The law in El Salvador does not contemplate a second consecutive term. But Bukele managed to get a constitutional court to endorse his aspirations. On Sunday night, at 42 years old and after having started politically on the left (the FMLN), leaning towards the center and jumping to the right, he will end up chiselling a model of a country in his image and likeness.
Dreams of perpetuity
The forcefulness of his victory was so expected on the same Sunday that the head of the New Ideas bench, deputy Christian Guevara, predicted the end of the opposition parties in the legislature. Félix Ulloa, current vice president and Bukele’s running mate, was much bolder in front of the Univision cameras. He spoke about a new presidential reelection in four years, contrary to institutional legality. “In politics there is nothing written in stone, everything is possible“.
‘El Diario de Hoy’ warned about the “dictatorial” daydreams of Bukelism. The alarm signal, he said, was raised by Ulloa himself in statements to ‘The New York Times’. “To the people who say that We are dismantling democracyI answer: Yes, but we are not dismantling it, we are eliminating it, we are replacing it with something new.”
Katya Salazar, executive director of the Due Process Foundation (DPLF), who arrived in the country as an election observer, did not ignore these opinions. “I have to warn them (the Salvadoran people) that there is no experience in the world where a Government that has all the powers has been successful. It is a danger that there is a single party“.
Security as a winning card
According to observers, during election day there was a strong military presence in the streets and voting centers. El Salvador is, in fact, militarized. Bukele went from making an agreement with criminal gangs to a total war, on March 27, 2022, and after 72 hours that left 87 dead. The homicide rate, which stood at 106.3 fatal cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015, fell to 2.4 in 2023. The fight against gangs led even children to prison. The small Central American country has 42.7% poor and 1.7% of its population locked up in prisons. Human rights organizations have filed thousands of complaints about arbitrary detentions, torture and other crimes committed by state forces. Bukele is not moved by these complaints.
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