Elections in El Salvador - Why Salvadoreans love their populist president, Nayib Bukele | The Americas economist.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from economist.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
El Salvador president consolidates power amid fears of authoritarianism
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, addresses supporters in San Salvador.
(Moises Castillo / Associated Press)
A year ago, the president of El Salvador denounced the opposition-controlled congress as a collection
of “criminals” and stormed into the legislative palace with heavily armed troops and police in riot gear.
The show of force a failed attempt to win approval of a $109-million loan for military and law enforcement equipment to crack down on gang violence was widely assailed as one of the darkest points in El Salvador’s history since a bloody civil war ended in 1992.
Nayib Bukele, Latin Americaâs youngest president, doesnât much like venturing into the street, or indigenous people, or wandering around markets, or being photographed with other peopleâs babies. The 39-year-old leader of El Salvador instead enjoys his cellphone, public image polls and âimplementing, implementing, implementing.â This has proven sufficient to sweep away three decades of bipartisanism and drastically transform the political landscape of a country still marked by the wounds of a bloody civil war (1980-1992) that ended when Bukele was barely 10.
In the view of his biographer and advisor, Geovani Galeas, Bukele is a multi-tasker capable of shaping the destiny of his people from the computer screens in his office, and is a leader with a political persona comparable to that of Fidel Castro or Mao Zedong. According to his former attorney and current political adversary Bertha Deleón, Bukele is âan adolescent with power, incapable of maintain
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FILE PHOTO: El Salvador President Nayib Bukele speaks during a promotion ceremony from policemen to corporals in San Salvador, El Salvador, September 30, 2020. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas
SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - Salvadorans went to the polls on Sunday to vote in legislative and municipal elections that could give a broad victory to President Nayib Bukele’s party, consolidating his overhaul of traditional politics.
Opinion polls show that Bukele’s party, New Ideas, could win more than half of the mayoral positions, and enough seats to hold at least a simple majority in Congress.
A two-thirds majority in Congress would let the party appoint high-level government officials, such as the attorney general and five of the 15 Supreme Court justices.