All power to “King” Bukele

He declared, “On this day El Salvador has broken all records of all democracies in the entire history of the world.” NB Armando Bukele Ortez In front of a packed crowd in front of the National Palace, knowing that he had been re-elected with almost 85% of the votes, while there were still no official results (eventually they stopped at 83%). He received 1,600,000 votes compared to 139,000 votes received by his nearest rival. manuel floresFarabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FLMN, for its acronym), Bukele’s disgraced former party that was once his political springboard so he could become mayor twice but did not support him when he wanted to be a presidential candidate. Did.

Bukele already had absolute power. And this is not his first record. According to the Latinobarometro regional survey in 2023, he is the most popular president in Latin America. Despite criticism of his human rights violations in El Salvador, his mass arrests, his accumulation of absolute powers, and his violation of rights, his popularity stands at 90%. Constitution of your country to get re-elected. Bukele holds many historical records. He was elected El Salvador’s youngest president at age 37 and accomplished in 200 days of emergency rule what no one had accomplished in 30 years: the arrests of 75,000 alleged members of the gangs terrorizing the neighborhood. It then reached the highest imprisonment rate in the world: two out of every hundred adult Salvadorans are in prison. And since there was no room to hold so many prisoners, he also ordered the construction of “the largest” maximum security prison in the world in a record time of six months.

The “millennial” president, as the media called him, or the “best dictator”, as he calls himself, celebrated that 2023 was the safest year in the history of El Salvador, with a rate of 2.25 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, Lowest in America. In 2015, El Salvador became the country with the highest number of murders per capita in the world. Bukele now has a handshake Lionel Messi In his country, being the host of the Miss Universe pageant, having the largest library on the continent that operates 24 hours a day all year round and his country being the first to legalize Bitcoin as a currency.

Many Latin American countries are beginning to consider the El Salvador model. «Bukele does not align himself with traditional currents such as left, right, socialism, communism or capitalism; He takes the practical path of common sense and breaks the pattern with which he was ruling. People weren’t interested in whether he was from the right or the left, they wanted him to solve their problems and that’s how they understood it,” he says. luis alberto lopezAn El Salvadoran journalist with more than 30 years of experience and who has witnessed the evolution of the presidency.

“It is true that its weak point is that it breaks laws to solve problems.” “They can question the methodology, but not the results,” Lopez says. He pointed out that the president’s strengths that everyone might want to emulate might be: “determination, courage, independence and political will.” Don’t let yourself be pressured by other countries or international organizations. “He always says it will be his own recipe.”

There are some people who call a person a dictator whose two brothers and a few school friends are the center of trust. among others, digital medium Electricity houseWhich had to shift its headquarters to another country due to political persecution. “This dictatorship was not created overnight.” This is not the result of any armed and untimely coup. This has been a systematic process of almost five years with the complicity of corrupt politicians and officials and a mostly cowardly or opportunistic business community; With the weakness of a discredited, divided or persecuted opposition; And, above all, with the leadership of a family clan obsessed with one mission: all power,” he said in an editorial.

And, internationally, many organizations have raised questions about human rights violations in mass detention, as well as inhumane conditions in prisons.