What is behind its popularity and strict policies?

First modification: 09/17/2022 – 01:20

Just when El Salvador was celebrating its independence day, and after a day of massive protests against his management, President Nayib Bukele announced his desire to be re-elected once his first five-year term ends.

With the announcement, Bukele becomes the first president of the country to seek immediate re-election, protected by a resolution that modified the old law that disqualified presidents for two consecutive terms.

It was in September 2021 when, in the midst of a highly criticized process, magistrates from the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, elected by allies of Bukele in Congress, determined that presidents can be re-elected after their first term.

How did Nayib Bukele manage to access re-election?

With the country’s Magna Carta denying a second term to any president and with constant international denunciations accusing the Government of human rights violations, after the news of the re-election was known, the debate has focused on the strategies used by the president Salvadoran to get to the point where it is today.

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For Saúl Hernández Alfaro, a political scientist and journalist from El Salvador, who spoke with France 24, “it is not surprising that for a president who has shown himself to concentrate power, eliminate spaces for counterweights or management controls, his aim is to control the Judiciary and therefore, with it, make the most important decisions. These new magistrates who were imposed, interpreted a month ago that Bukele could run for re-election, interpreting that the Constitution gave rise to this.”

And it is that Nayib Bukele himself in 2013, six years before coming to power, assured and publicly defended in a Nicaraguan media outlet that “no president of El Salvador could be re-elected to ensure that no one person remains in power.”

“The Constitution does not allow the same person to be president twice in a row. He can be president 80 times if he wants but not in a row”, Nayib Bukele said in the televised interview in 2013, when he was mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán.

International rejection and local popularity

Nayib Bukele has been on the front pages of the media in several countries for his controversial decisions and strict measures that he has implemented since he came to power in June 2019.

Two of the most remembered are when he approved the legal course of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency and, on the other hand, his so-called “war against gangs” in which he has carried out more than 52,500 arrests of men accused of being part of criminal groups and after which, according to the United Nations, there have been nearly 6,500 complaints of violations of human rights.

All of this is framed in an exceptional regime, which suspends fundamental rights for Salvadorans and which has been renewed since March without opposition from the Legislature, since there the party led by Bukele has an absolute majority.

However, many of those who elected him defend and justify his much-criticized methods, since they assure that they are the means that the country needed to solve several of its internal problems.

Today, after his announcement for re-election was known, it is easy to find comments, trills and publications in support of the president’s management from those who also assure that they will support him in his quest to win a second presidential term.

All these aspects that the international community criticizes “are applauded by the Salvadoran population because for the great majority it is still not palpable how to understand the lack of institutionality and division of powers, because in the past they have known corruption, This is why they continue to accept some appropriations of authoritarianism and opacity, in order to see some of their basic needs resolved, such as security and the economy. Aspects that Bukele, despite having done with irregular policies and measures, have satisfied the populations,” Hernández Alfaro told France 24.

In this way, the popularity of the controversial head of state has been increasing, and the official results in which he shows that the economy and security are getting better and better for the Central American country have allowed Bukele’s speech to be replicated throughout the world. country.

“Bukele has managed to make an impact with quite effective public communication management. He has a technical team practically at his full disposal to communicate his management works, give the projection of a Government that responds effectively, that listens to the people (…) After the signing of the peace agreements in 1992, Bukele arrived as that avenger of the discontent of the population for wanting to have a change in his country, in his leadership. Hernandez Alfaro said. “In this way, he arrives as charismatic, young, great communicator, fresh, and with a new political party, which by his position manages to transform the ideology of society in part of El Salvador,” he added.

According to political experts, The current reality of the country does not offer the population a “political position that is partisan and competitive”, a situation that makes voters who do not know whether to vote for Bukele in 2024do not have a clear figure or a defined alternative for a presidential candidate.

In the words of the Salvadoran political scientist Hernández Alfaro, “what is expected is that if this political panorama does not change, and that by the way there is not much room anymore because there is only one year left, practically what we would be attending is a re-election that ends with a new mandate for Bukele for five years, and this would only be the consolidation of his presence in the rest of the State institutions that still maintain a certain independence.”

Since September 2021, the year in which the high court made the resolution that today favors Bukele’s re-election, there have been five massive marches in the country, in which Salvadorans have accused the Executive of corruption, human rights violations , rebuke of freedom and abuse of power.

With EFE and local media