Bukele prepares to sweep the elections in El Salvador

Nayib Bukele is walking steadily towards a new re-election in El Salvador. The country's president will almost certainly win again this Sunday in elections that will keep him in power for five more years. Bukele has become tremendously popular for having deactivated the gangs that for two decades turned El Salvador into one of the most dangerous countries in the world. The homicide rate has plummeted and extortion has been reduced to a minimum. The army has flooded the streets since declaring a state of emergency two years ago that remains in force to this day. With his tough policy he has filled the prisons with more than 70,000 new inmates. The millennial president, 42, has transformed the nation in a radical way.

In exchange, thousands of innocent people have been arrested and basic social freedoms have been suspended, according to international organizations. U.S. officials have gone so far as to compare Bukele to Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela. He has joked about this on social media and has responded that it is the United States that should hold free and fair elections in 2024. The president of this small Central American nation dismissed the judges of the Supreme Court two years ago and installed in their place related criminal lawyers who have reinterpreted the Salvadoran Constitution to allow him to run for a second consecutive term, something that until now was prohibited. The Legislative Assembly, after this Sunday, will also be made up of a majority from Bukele's party.

The international community has been alarmed by what it considers an authoritarian drift. However, members of the Salvadoran Government do not seem very concerned about it. The vice presidential candidate, Félix Ulloa, has told the The New York Times that its objective is to eliminate what it considers a flawed democracy. “To these people who say democracy is being dismantled. My answer is yes. We are not dismantling it, we are eliminating it, we are replacing it with something new,” said Ulloa, one of the men closest to the president. Bukele's electoral message is very simple. With him in power, the gangs will continue to be subjugated. Choosing the opposition —Arena, on the right; or FMLN, from the left—means opening the doors of prisons to criminals, without that being necessarily true.

The message has penetrated strongly. Polls put his popularity at more than 80%. The two major parties, which had alternated in power until now, are practically destroyed. Nuevas Ideas, the formation that Bukele created to compete in the last elections, in 2019, has brought together all the power. The streets are filled with their propaganda, while it is almost impossible to find an opposition advertisement. It seems that a one-party policy governs. Salvadorans have turned their backs on traditional politics after decades of incompetence and corruption.

Bukele has become a global phenomenon. His years as a publicist at a company owned by his father, a wealthy man of Palestinian origin, taught him to sell himself as a brand. And works. His videos on social networks have cinematic quality and show a country that is often difficult to recognize. Aerial shots of the megaprison he has built to house alleged terrorists have been seen by millions of people around the world. In these infomercials he always looks impeccable, with a perfectly shaped beard, combed hair, and with jeans and a backwards cap that give him a youthful air. A dozen Venezuelan advisers who worked with Juan Guaidó, the U.S.-appointed interim president of Venezuela, are busy shaping his image.

Imitators have emerged in the region. Ecuador's new president, Daniel Noboa, has promised to apply El Salvador's policies to stop the wave of homicides and violence plaguing his country. For the moment, he has announced the express construction of two prisons to house gang members. For Bukele, if success is measured by his popularity, it has worked for him. He has not even had to campaign for these elections, just bombard his social networks with propaganda. He is seen very little and when he does it is to appear in interviews with uncritical YouTubers. Even some parents who have their children locked up in those prisons, from which it costs a world to get out because due process is violated, will vote for Bukele this Sunday with their eyes closed. Today, nothing stands between him and absolute power.

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