El Salvador's head of state Nayib Bukele has declared himself the winner of the presidential election. The 42-year-old explained that he received “more than 85 percent of the votes” in the ballot on Sunday on the online service A few minutes later, huge fireworks were set off in the capital, San Salvador. It was widely expected that Bukele would be confirmed in office in the first round. None of his five opponents received polls above five percent.
Bukele is popular in El Salvador because of his commitment to security and against organized crime. Since his surprising election victory in 2019, the crime rate in the Central American country with its 6.8 million inhabitants has fallen to a low. The opposition accuses the president of authoritarian tendencies. The populist head of state had the Constitutional Court allow him to run for a second term in 2021. Until then, it was impossible for a sitting head of state to run again.
Fight against rampant gang crime
Bukele and his wife cast their votes two hours before the polls closed. Bukele then gave a press conference where he branded organized crime a “cancer” and defended his crackdown. “Why do we have the highest incarceration rate in the world?” Bukele asked the journalists. “Because we (…) turned the murder capital of the world, the most dangerous country in the world, into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere.” The only way , to achieve this goal is to “arrest all the murderers.”
In March 2022, Bukele declared war on rampant gang crime in the small Central American country and declared a state of emergency. This allows, among other things, detention without a judge's order. Since then, more than 75,000 suspected gang members have been arrested. Human rights organizations criticize the state of emergency as a drastic restriction of fundamental rights. According to critics, many innocent people were also detained, including minors. According to human rights organizations, torture and ill-treatment occur in detention centers.
“We have had surgery, we are undergoing radiation therapy and we will go home healthy and without ligament cancer,” Bukele said on election day. He accused Western countries of wanting to impose their “liberal ideas” about democracy on Salvador.
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