SAN SALVADOR – President Nayib Bukele on Sunday won a landslide victory in El Salvador’s election after voters brushed aside concerns about the erosion of democracy to reward him for a crackdown on gangs that has transformed security in the Central American country.
Thousands of Bukele’s supporters dressed in cyan blue and waving flags filled San Salvador’s central square to celebrate his re-election, which the 42-year-old leader called a “referendum” on his government.
Bukele declared himself the winner before the official results were announced, claiming to have achieved more than 85% of the vote.
Provisional results show Bukele won 83% support with 31% of the votes counted.
His New Ideas Party is expected to win nearly all 60 seats in the legislature, tightening its grip on the country and giving more influence to Bukele, the most powerful leader in El Salvador’s modern history.
“The entire opposition has been destroyed,” Bukele, standing with his wife on the balcony of the National Palace, told his supporters.
“El Salvador changed from being the least safe (country) to the safest. Now in the next five years, wait to see what we will do,” added Bukele.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele won re-election Sunday night. AP
New Idea’s electoral success means Bukele will wield unprecedented power and be able to overhaul El Salvador’s constitution, which opponents fear will result in the abolition of term limits.
Hugely popular, Bukele has campaigned on the success of his security strategy in which authorities suspended civil liberties to arrest more than 75,000 Salvadorans without charge.
The arrest led to a sharp drop in homicide rates across the country and fundamentally transformed a country of 6.3 million people that was once among the most dangerous in the world.
But some analysts say mass incarceration of 1% of the population is not sustainable in the long term.
A few hours earlier, a confident Bukele had held a press conference and said his side needed all the support it could get to sustain the anti-gang fight and continue to rebuild El Salvador.
“So if we’ve overcome our cancer, with the metastasis that’s a gang, now we just have to recover and be the person we’ve always wanted to be,” Bukele said.
Bukele declared himself the winner before the official results were announced, claiming to have achieved more than 85% of the vote. AP
Not many doubt the election results. Polls show most voters want to reward Bukele for destroying the criminal gangs that made life unbearable in El Salvador and fueled a wave of migration to the United States.
Guadalupe Guillen, a 55-year-old shopkeeper, appeared at the victory party wearing an Arabic tunic and scarf, a nod to Bukele’s family’s Palestinian heritage.
“We celebrate him, thank him, thank God, for getting us out of this group problem. We don’t want to go back to that horrible past,” said Guillen, who added he no longer pays $300 in extortion to gangs every two weeks.
“Democracy is not at risk because all the people have voted for it,” Guillen said, reiterating the government’s stance on Western countries’ concerns about an authoritarian drift under Bukele.
The candidates of the FMLN and ARENA, two parties that have alternated power between them until 2019, are expected to receive single-digit support as voters again reject traditional parties whose rule has been marked by decades of violence and corruption.
“The entire opposition has been destroyed,” Bukele, standing with his wife on the balcony of the National Palace, told his supporters. Getty Images
ECONOMIC DISASTER
A well-known politician who frequently spars with foreign leaders and critics on social media, Bukele came to power in 2019 defeating traditional parties on a pledge to stamp out gang violence and revive the stagnant economy.
He used his New Ideas party’s large majority in the legislature to pack the courts with loyalists and overhaul state institutions, consolidating his control over key parts of the government. He also championed the introduction of Bitcoin as legal tender, drawing criticism from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
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El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal last year allowed him to run for a second term despite the country’s constitution prohibiting it. Opponents fear Bukele will seek to rule for life, following President Daniel Ortega of neighboring Nicaragua.
“Everyone knows it is against the constitution to re-elect the president but what the people want is security. They don’t care if it’s against the constitution, they just want to feel safe,” said Josue Galdamez, 39, a businessman and trader who supports Bukele for his crusade against gangs.
When asked on Sunday by reporters if he planned to change the constitution to include indefinite re-election, Bukele said he “doesn’t think constitutional reform will be necessary,” but did not directly answer the question of whether he would try to run. third term.
The New Ideas Party is expected to win almost all 60 seats in the legislature. AFP via Getty Images
The Chinese Embassy in San Salvador in a broadcast on X congratulated Bukele and his party “for the historic victory in this election.”
Human rights groups say El Salvador’s democracy is under attack. Bukele has taken it easy, at one point changing his profile on X to say: “The greatest dictator in the world.”
Bukele’s biggest challenge in his second term may be the economy, the slowest growth in Central America during his time in power. More than a quarter of Salvadorans live in poverty.
Extreme poverty has doubled and private investment has fallen under Bukele. There isn’t much momentum on his highly publicized plans for Bitcoin City, a tax-free crypto haven powered by geothermal energy from a volcano.
The IMF, which is negotiating a $1.3 billion bailout with El Salvador, at the end of 2023 described the country’s fiscal situation as “fragile.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
