Nayib Bukele, surrounded by hundreds of his followers, came to the voting center established on Olympic Boulevard. He smiled the smile of someone who announces victory before the polls open. If the 6.2 million citizens eligible to vote (740,000 of whom are abroad) know anything, it’s this: The result is written in advance. Bukele, the champion of the iron fist, the implementing arm of the ruthless policy against crime that has imprisoned 71,000 people, has completed the election process and once again hailed those who lived through it as the born winner of the contest. He is almost a re-elected president.
International observers detected a “relatively normal development“It’s about the electoral process. ‘Normality’ was also marked by a general acceptance of the facts. Polls before the election gave the president a huge advantage over the other five rival parties. Manuel ‘Chino’ Flores of the left-wing Frente National, which is close behind Bukele in the polls Farabundo Martí of the Liberation Party (FMLN) emerged with a margin of close to 75 points.
Elections were signed institutional anomaly. The law in El Salvador does not contemplate a second consecutive term. However, Bukele managed to find a constitutional court that would approve his wishes. On Sunday night, at the age of 42 and after starting politically from the left (FMLN), he will begin to carve out a model of the country in his own image and likeness, leaning towards the center and leaping to the right.
Dreams of continuity
On the same Sunday, his victory was so expected to be strong that MP Christian Guevara, chairman of the New Ideas platform, predicted the end of the opposition parties in the parliament. Félix Ulloa, the current vice president and Bukele’s running mate, was much bolder in front of the Univision cameras. talked about something new presidential election in four years, It is against corporate law. “There is nothing written in stone in politics, anything is possible“.
‘El Diario de Hoy’ warned about Bukelism’s “dictatorship” dreams. He said that the alarm signal was voiced by Ulloa himself in his statements to ‘The New York Times’. “To the people who say that we are tearing apart democracyI answer: Yes, but we don’t dismantle it, we eliminate it, we replace it with something new.”
Due Process Foundation (DPLF) Executive Director Katya Salazar, who came to the country as an election observer, did not ignore these views. “I must warn them (the people of El Salvador) that there is no experience in the world where an all-powerful government has been successful. There is a danger of one party“.
Security as a winning card
According to observers, there was a strong military presence on the streets and at polling stations on election day. El Salvador is essentially militarized. Bukele turned from making deals with criminal gangs to all-out war on March 27, 2022, and after 72 hours, 87 people were dead. The homicide rate, which was 106.3 fatal cases per 100,000 people in 2015, dropped to 2.4 in 2023. The fight against gangs even put children in prison. small Central American country 42.7 percent of them are poor and 1.7 percent of their population is detained in prisons. Human rights organizations have filed thousands of complaints about arbitrary detentions, torture and other crimes committed by state forces. Bukele is not very impressed by these complaints.