In El Salvador, presidents are prohibited from serving consecutive terms. However, Bukele circumvented the restriction by going on leave shortly before the elections.
Central America In El Salvador, the president Nayib Bukele has been elected for a new five-year term with a crushing majority of votes, Bukele says in the message service X.
Bukele says he collected more than 85 percent of the votes in the presidential election.
“A record in the democratic history of the entire world,” Bukele declared.
Bukele has served as the president of El Salvador since 2019. The country's constitution prohibits the president from serving consecutive terms, but Bukele went on leave in early December to circumvent this ban.
Inauguration in the new season are June 1. El Salvador's Constitutional Court, whose composition has been appointed by the Bukele administration at will, interpreted that a half-year leave of office is enough to prevent the interpretation of succession.
After the election result was announced on Sunday, fireworks were set off in the capital, San Salvador, and hundreds of people gathered in the city's central square to celebrate Bukele's victory.
“We are more than happy with this victory. We will get Bukele again for five years”, a 38-year-old nurse Lorena Escobar told news agency AFP.
Bukele42, is considered Latin America's most popular head of state.
He has become extremely popular by dramatically reducing the gang crime that has long plagued the country. As recently as last decade, El Salvador ranked first in the world in the number of murders in relation to its population, but now it is one of the safest countries on the continent.
The suppression of gangs has happened partly at the expense of the rule of law and individual freedoms. During the state of emergency that started in March 2022 and is still ongoing, the police and soldiers have had broad powers to arrest people at their own discretion without suspicion of a crime. During this time, more than 70,000 people have been imprisoned in the country based on gang connections, and there are also many innocent people among them.
However, the majority of El Salvadorians do not mind the decay of democracy, or at least consider it worth security.
Citizens celebrated Bukele's victory in the capital on Sunday.
After voting on Sunday, Bukele told the media that he had cured the “cancer” of gangs in El Salvador.
“Why do we have relatively the most prisoners in the world? Because we turned the murder capital of the world, the most dangerous country in the world into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere,” Bukele said.
“The only way to do that is to arrest all the murderers.”
Human rights organizations have e
xpressed their concern that many innocent people have ended up in poor conditions in prison. There are also minors among them.
Concern has also been raised about the concentration of power. The judiciary has increasingly come under Bukele's control, as the parliament has appointed judges favorable to him. The Movement Space of the free media has also narrowed.
Bukele has used accusations of autocracy to brand himself and often referred to himself ironically as a “dictator”.
The big challenge of Bukele's second term is the economy. El Salvador is burdened by a huge public debt, and the situation has been worsened by Bukele's bitcoin investments made with public money.
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