Nayib Bukele won a large victory in El Salvador’s presidential election this Sunday, February 4. According to a CID-Gallup exit poll, he obtained 87% of the vote. The institute stressed that it had “never observed a gap of this magnitude during an election”.
“This is the first time that there is democracy in the country,” declared Nayib Bukele. There is no dictatorship, people vote in a democracy. The people say: I am not oppressed, I am happy.”
The undeniable popularity of the “cool dictator” is linked to the ruthless security policy he imposed during his first term. A simple figure shows the effectiveness of this policy: the number of homicides rose from 87 per 100,000 in 2019, the year he came to power, to 2.41 in 2023.
For years, the country had been plagued by the two maras (gangs) which sowed terror in all the streets of the country: Salvatrucha and Barrio 18. Their members, often tattooed even on their faces to recognize each other, had control of the majority of the country, racketeering, murdering, creating a climate of extreme violence. Their settling of scores often ended with the dismemberment or decapitation of an adversary. Driving around the streets of San Salvador sometimes required gigantic detours if your taxi hadn’t paid the right people the right amount. Going out into the streets after dark was impossible without having the protection of one of the gangs.
“El Salvador had cancer with metastases. 85% of the territory was dominated by gangs, Nayib Bukele likes to recall. We have had surgery, chemo, radiotherapy and we are going to come out cured, without the cancer in the bands. We eliminated what was killing us. What now awaits El Salvador is a period of prosperity.”
The remedy was particularly radical: in March 2022, President Bukele declared a state of emergency, which authorized the deployment of the army on Salvadoran streets and arrests without arrest warrants. In total, 75,000 arrests have been made since then, for a population of 6.5 million people. The president has built a mega prison that he calls a “terrorism containment center.” No lawyer can enter this establishment. No contact is possible with the outside world.
But the results are there and the Salvadoran population has shown its gratitude by voting again with a very large majority for this young 42-year-old president. This re-election was normally impossible according to the Constitution. But the “cool dictator” managed to get around the obstacle by resigning at the beginning of December, six months before the end of his mandate. If many jurists contest the maneuver, the population did not hold it against him.
Nayib Bukele is the fifth child in a family of Palestinian origin. The father, Armando, was an influential entrepreneur in the country. He founded the first mosques in Central America. Nayib Bukele was first elected mayor in 2012 of the small town of Nuevo Cuscatlan, lost in the mountains 13 kilometers from San Salvador, the capital. He was then a member of the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), heir to the guerrillas who fought against power during the civil war in the 1980s. He then successfully ran for mayor of the capital in 2015. In 2019, he wants to run for president, but his party finds him too young. He leaves it and manages to win the election in the first round.
The Salvadoran president is often accused of extreme narcissism. In the town where he was first elected, Nuevo Cusctalan, the N of his first name is on the corner of every street. At San Salvador airport, a reproduction of his office with his portrait and that of his wife is the attraction. Many Salvadorans want to take a photo of themselves in this reconstructed presidential setting.
This Sunday, February 4, Nayib Bukele promised a period of prosperity, “because there is no longer any brake on business creation, no more brake on studies, no more brake on work, no more brake on tourism”. He believes that once insecurity is overcome, the country’s economy will finally be able to develop. Salvadorans need it. 70% of jobs are in the informal sector, which does not give them access to health and retirement benefits. 30% of Salvadorans live in poverty according to Cepal (United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean). 21% of GDP is generated by remesas, these remittances from expatriates. In this dollarized economy, Nayib Bukele wanted to make bitcoin official currency in 2021. The IMF warned of the dangers of this decision, recalling the extreme volatility of this financial tool. State debt amounts to 80% of GDP. “The security situation has improved, but the economy is still in bad shape,” notes analyst Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank. Many Salvadorans leave the country every day.
Nayib Bukele’s security policy and its results are viewed with curiosity and sometimes envy by other Latin American countries where insecurity is increasingly worrying. The new Ecuadorian president, Daniel Noboa, said he wanted to take inspiration from it. The new Argentine president, Javier Milei, also expressed his admiration for his Salvadoran counterpart.