Salvadorans are voting in an election on Sunday that is widely expected to give Nayib Boucle, the self-proclaimed “coolest dictator in the world,” a second term as president.
El Salvador’s constitution prohibits re-election, but his supporters have largely ignored such concerns. Nor has his popularity been hampered by allegations that he is chipping away at El Salvador’s system of checks and balances while combating gang violence.
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador speaks at the inauguration of Bijosa Laboratories’ new factory on November 20, 2023 in La Libertad, El Salvador. (Alex Peña/Getty Images)
Bukele’s government has arrested more than 76,000 people in a nearly two-year crackdown on gangs. Crime has plummeted and Salvadorans have reclaimed neighborhoods, but the mass arrests have been criticized as a lack of due process.
El Salvador’s traditional political parties of the left and right, which created the empty space Bukele filled for the first time in 2019, remain in disarray. Voter turnout for the presidential candidates of the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) was in the low single digits.
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Bukele has gained fame for his brutal crackdown on gangs, which has seen more than 1% of the country’s population arrested.
The regime has been accused of widespread human rights abuses, but violence has also plummeted in a country that just a few years ago was known as one of the world’s most dangerous countries.
Voters wearing T-shirts supporting President Nayib Boucle, who is seeking re-election, line up at a voting booth during the general election in San Salvador, El Salvador, Sunday, February 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
For this reason, many voters have largely overlooked concerns that Bukele is taking undemocratic steps to centralize power. That fear has disappeared since Bukele began his crackdown.
Bukele did not make any public campaign appearances in the run-up to Sunday’s vote. Instead, he spread the message to the public through social media and television ads that the gang crackdown would be at risk if his New Idea Party did not win.
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He said, “The opposition will be able to achieve its only real plan, which is to free gang members and use them to return to power.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
