2023-06-03 06:30:00
President Nayib Bukele completed four years in power in El Salvador this week, with great popularity for his “war” against gangs and the construction of a mega-prison, but with harsh criticism for the blow to democratic values and regarding violations of human rights.
Polls indicate that nine out of ten Salvadorans approve of Bukele’s management, which has returned security to the streets, but his anti-gang crusade set off alarm bells among human rights defenders and some analysts warn that he seems to govern without counterweight from other powers. of the State.
“The issue of reducing the operation of gangs can be described as a notable achievement (…), due to the reduction in the number of crimes committed,” Carlos Carcach, a researcher in the public policy area at the AFP, told AFP. Higher School of Economics and Business.
“The main achievement is the issue of security, the dismantling of the gangs,” agreed Carlos Acevedo, former president of the Central Reserve Bank. “It has really generated a new climate where we are beginning to see a revitalization of the productive fabric of microenterprises,” added Carcach.
The gangs maintained control of 80% of the country’s territory, according to the Government, and financed themselves with extortion, hit men and drug trafficking.
To combat them, an emergency regime has been in force for 14 months that allows the Police and the Army to make arrests without a warrant.
The measure was approved by Congress at the request of Bukele, in response to an escalation of gang violence that killed 87 people.
The authorities have been liberating neighborhoods and recovering thousands of houses usurped by gang members. Homicides fell in 2022 to a quarter of the 2019 figure, according to official data.
In fact, threatened by gangs, Cristina Arévalo, 71, had to close her small store on the outskirts of San Salvador a few years ago, but now she plans to reopen it. “With the security that exists, I will soon reopen, because they are no longer going to extort me,” she told AFP.
So far nearly 69,000 suspected gang members have been detained, of whom some 5,000 have been released, according to the government. To lock up the gang members, Bukele built a mega-prison for 40,000 prisoners, the “largest prison in America”, with a severe confinement regime.
The NGO Cristosal said that as of April 153 inmates had died “in state custody.”
But Bukele, a 41-year-old publicist and social media fanatic, has faced almost non-existent opposition since the 2019 “shock” when he defeated candidates from the traditional parties of the right and left.
With the support of Congress, where he has a large majority, in 2021 he dismissed the five judges of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, the highest judicial instance in the country.
He also dismissed the attorney general and a third of the 690 judges (those over 60 or with 30 years of service). The United States, the UN and the OAS then called on El Salvador to respect the separation of powers.
In addition, Bukele got the Supreme Court to authorize him to seek re-election in 2024, although the Constitution prohibits it, generating a debate about whether the measure is legal.
“The government and the president have everything set for re-election, not only because of popular support, but because they have control of the majority of the institutions,” the vice-rector of the Central American University (UCA), Omar Serrano, told AFP. .
“It has been a government that has shaken the country,” but that “has taken away many things, which has undermined the incipient democratic advances that were made,” he added.
For Carcach, the cost of containing the gangs has been “implementing a regime of exception that implies the disappearance of the rule of law and the reign of the constitution.”
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