Salvadorans began voting this Sunday in elections designed to give President Nayib Bukele re-election and greater power. The president is praised for putting ruthless gangs behind bars with a relentless “war” that overrides civil liberties.
Bukele, a 42-year-old former publicist, is almost guaranteed a second five-year term with an overwhelming 90% popularity rating and no major opponents and could even crush the opposition in the new 60-seat Congress, which he already comfortably controls.
In a vote that will take place under a state of emergency for the first time since the end of the civil war in 19992, around 6.2 million Salvadorans, including 740,000 abroad, are called to vote in the elections, which open at 07:00 a.m. (1:00 p.m. GMT) and close at 5:00 p.m. local time (11:00 p.m. GMT).
“We will be an example of civility,” said the president of the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), Dora Martínez, opening the vote at an event in the historic center of San Salvador.
Relieved by the calm that reigned in their neighborhoods previously taken over by the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs, Salvadorans welcomed Bukele’s “iron fist” policies, even at the expense of some freedoms.
“I had to pay ‘rent’ (extortion), they told me they would kill my wife and my mother. They came to my work with weapons. Now everything has improved,” Nelson García, 39, told AFP at a food sale in the capital.
After a bloody weekend with 87 deaths, Bukele declared a state of emergency in March 2022, covering a total of almost 76,000 prisoners and reducing murders to an all-time low, officially 2.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, in the country previously the greatest criminal violence in the world.
But organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch denounce arbitrary arrests, torture and deaths in prison. About 7,000 innocent people have been released, but many remain in prison without due process or the opportunity to communicate with their families.
Towards a “hegemonic party”
His power is immense. Bukele, who is of Palestinian descent and mocks his critics who call him a “dictator,” controls parliament, the judiciary, the prosecutor’s office and the rest of the state apparatus.
The justices renewed by that Congress interpreted the Constitution in his favor and allowed him to run for a second term, although re-election was prohibited, which is why analysts and opponents claim his candidacy was unconstitutional.
The opposition is in ruins. Its five candidates hardly appear in the polls, including the left-wing Farabundo Martí Front (FMLN), Manuel Flores, and the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), Joel Sánchez.
“In another five years he will have enough time to consolidate hegemonic party dynamics,” commented political scientist Álvaro Artiga from the Central American University (UCA).
Latin America’s most popular president, according to a regional poll, is very confident of his re-election and has not even asked for a vote for him.
He fueled fears of a return of the gangs and called for voting for his Nuevas Ideas party and not losing any of its 56 seats in the outgoing 84-member legislature so as not to endanger the war against the gangs.
The economic struggle
Wearing jeans and a sweater, with a trimmed beard and gelled hair, this millennial came to power in 2019 promising change to a population fed up with the Arena-FMLN two-party system that failed to solve problems of insecurity and poverty.
“After security, we are now worried about the high cost of living, that is the big challenge,” former central bank president Carlos Acevedo told AFP.
According to ECLAC, 29% of the 6.5 million Salvadorans living in the country are poor, and many continue to migrate to the United States in search of work. About 3 million live abroad and send $8 billion worth of remittances annually, making up a third of the population.
“On Sunday, if he wins, yes! Now the problems we are facing are economic problems. There is no work,” Maité Domínguez, a 69-year-old street vendor, told AFP.
Despite everything and his popularity, in his opinion, Bukele failed to get Salvadorans to use the Bitcoin, which he made legal tender in the dollar economy in 2021 to boost it.
With between five and seven million followers