Nayib Bukele completes 100 days of his second term in El Salvador: how is the government of the popular and controversial president going?

The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukeleis close to fulfilling the first 100 days of his second consecutive termdespite the constitutional prohibition, who have been marked by accusations against their party, demands for economic improvements and the continuation of the state of exception.

These are the key points of this period, in which Bukele has not made many public appearances:

Internal tensions and image crises in new ideas

According to Eduardo Escobardirector of the organization Citizen Action, one of the issues that has marked the first months of the second Bukele Government has been “the first image crisis before the public opinion of the president’s party.”

Use of the legislative budget that has not been made public, there is no information on how it is used, there is no accountability from the party

According to Escobar, this is due to the “use of the legislative budget that has not been made public, there is no information on how it is used, there is no accountability from the party.”

A group of cyber activists would have filtered the database of hundreds of employees of Congress, dominated by the Nuevas Ideas (NI) party, which triggered a series of criticisms on social networks.

At the beginning of July, Bukele told a media outlet that each deputy has $14,500 for expensesbut this would be reduced to 11,000 dollars a month. Currently, Bukule’s party has 57 of the 60 deputies.

Some lawmakers tried to head off the accusations by publishing the names and salaries of their direct collaborators, but this did not stop the wave of criticism.

Exceptional regime under the microscope on human rights

Since Bukele assumed his second term, Congress, at the request of his Government Cabinet, continued to systematically approve the exceptional regime, which amounts to at least 81,900 arrests and 30 extensions.

In this context, humanitarian organizations have said that they have documented at least 6,400 complaints of human rights violations since March 2022, mainly due to arbitrary detentionsshort-term disappearances of detainees and torture.

Added to this is the Death of more than 300 people in state custodymost with signs of violenceaccording to the organization Legal Humanitarian Aid (SJH).

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) too
k up these complaints in a recently released report and recommended ending the limitations on constitutional guarantees of the exceptional regime, establishing a comprehensive policy of security and reparation to victims of violations of their human rights.

Confrontation with the IACHR over report on freedom of expression

In response to the aforementioned report, the National Human Rights Commission and Freedom of Expression of the Bukele Government questioned the transparency in the preparation of the report and the financing of the IACHR.

He criticized that “both the IACHR and Cristosal, one of the main sources of the report, receive funding from the same entities, such as the Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation.”

However, Commissioner José Luis Caballero noted in his concurring vote, which is in the report, that “The Commission applied the methodology established by its Regulation“and that this is “consistent” with the organization’s 65 years of work.

Economic promises and inflationary challenges

Upon assuming his second term, Bukele promised “heal” the economy and the two main economic measures announced in these 100 days have been the creation of agricultural markets to sell food at a lower price and the transfer of the administration of its two main ports to a Turkish company.

This involves the creation of a joint venture between a state entity and the company Yilport, which would have the 80% of societyin exchange for an investment of more than 1.6 billion dollars (about 1.457 billion euros).

Despite the measure to alleviate the food price hikewhich also included the suspension of tariffs, inflation in the country has reached its highest level since last December with 1.78%.

The basic food basket, on the other hand, went from costing $256.74 in January to $264.91 in July, an increase of 3.18%.

Trump Accusations: Is El Salvador Sending Gang Members to the US Under Bukele?

On July 18, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump He stated in a speech that the reduction in homicides in El Salvador was not due to a security policy, but rather was due to the alleged sending of gang members to their country.

In El Salvador, murders have dropped by 70%. They have dropped because they are sending their killers to the United States.

“In El Salvador, murders are down 70%, why are they down? Now, he would convince you that it’s because they’ve trained assassins to be wonderful people. They’re down because they’re sending their assassins to the United States,” Trump said, without the Salvadoran president responding directly.