Incumbent President Nayib Bukele has declared victory in El Salvador’s recent election, claiming over 80 percent of the vote in a record-breaking outcome. Over 76,000 Salvadorans have been detained without trial under Bukele since a state of exception was first declared in March 2022. While a majority of Salvadorans approve of Bukele, critics have long decried his government’s authoritarianism, and are now raising questions about the legitimacy of his recent reelection. The Real News reports from El Salvador.
Videography / Post-Production: Michael Fox
Transcript
Michael Fox: El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has been reelected for a second term — Though, in El Salvador, that’s not supposed to be constitutionally possible.
Bukele declared himself victor on Sunday night in a Tweet, stating, “According to our numbers, we have won the presidential election with more than 85% of the votes.”
His people celebrated in downtown San Salvador. Bukele was quick to claim the results as an unprecedented popular mandate for his administration.
President Nayib Bukele [recording]: “In the history of the world since the dawn of democracy, a project had never won by the number of votes that we won with today [crowd cheers]. It is the greatest difference between first and second place in all of history.”
Michael Fox: Bukele is currently the most popular president in the Americas. According to the final results, he won 82% of the votes.
But that popularity has come at great cost. His war on the country’s gangs has cleaned the streets, but it’s also violated human rights and locked up thousands of innocent people.
While Bukele supporters celebrated, many others feared for the future.
42-year-old Bukele is both a millennial social media superstar and a self-described strongman. A Trump-like leader who represents a new, distinct kind of figure in Latin American politics — Both super cool and authoritarian.
His iron fist policies have won him tremendous popularity. Two years ago, he instituted a state of exception, which suspended habeas corpus and enabled him to lock up more than 70,000 alleged gang members indefinitely.
El Salvador has gone from one of the most dangerous countries in the region to one of the safest. The number of murders dropped 70% over the last year. The country’s homicide rate today is second to only Canada in the Western Hemisphere, and less than half that of the United States. Salvadorans say it has transformed their lives, and it earned Bukele widespread support at the ballot box.
Speaker: This is a historic, transcendental moment for the country, and we hope for more good things.
Omar Merino, voter: The situation was terrible before. You couldn’t walk in the street like this. And today, you go where you want freely. You enjoy as a family. It’s excellent.
Vladimir Salejio, taxi driver: We need to continue on the path that we’re on. The security situation today has changed the reality for our family. Before, it was a completely different story.
Lucia Merino, voter: There were neighborhoods where you couldn’t go, but now we’re free. Thank God for giving us a good president, Nayib Bukele. And God willing, he’ll be reelected again.
Michael Fox: On election day, huge banners of Bukele’s party, Nuevas Ideas, or New Ideas, were displayed prominently in front of polling stations.
His supporters rallied and cheered, and staffed tents in front of voting centers.
Jonathan Martinez: We’re here to help people, because there are elderly people, and they don’t always know how to use their phones. They might have a good phone, but they don’t know how to use it to find their polling station.
Michael Fox: But there’s a bit of a conflict of interest, considering they all wore shirts with the name of the president and his party. Political campaigning on the day of the vote was strictly banned and enforced in previous elections.
Not to mention the fact that presidential reelection itself is prohibited under El Salvador’s Constitution. Bukele’s candidacy was approved by a friendly Supreme Court in 2021. To get there, Bukele legislatures in Congress removed the previous court and replaced it with justices sympathetic to the president.
Voter: This election is unconstitutional, because it’s not based on the constitution as it’s written. But rather, they are forcing a presidential election that’s not legitimate.
Michael Fox: An overwhelming majority of the population supports the president. Their lives have been changed. But Bukele’s authoritarian crackdown has come at a tremendous cost.
The Friday before the vote, family members of the detained rallied in front of the attorney general’s office. They said their loved ones were innocent, and they delivered a letter demanding that the government body reopen investigations into the deaths of nearly 150 detainees.
Demonstrator: We are trying to denounce this reality. Many people have been victims of this system that has been implemented with the arrival of President Bukele. He has sold us a completely false image of what is happening in El Salvador.
[Crowd chanting]
It’s not fair that our loved ones are dying inside penal institutions and we have no information about them. My son and my brother are locked up. It’s been almost two years and I don’t know anything about their situation.
Ruth Isabel Hernandez: They detained my son on May 15, 2022. From that day until now, I don’t know anything about my son. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. We just have to confide in God and wait, because you go and you ask — What else can you do? — And they don’t say anything.
Michael Fox: Marisela Ramirez is a leader in a group of three dozen opposition organizations in El Salvador known as the Resistance Block. She says Bukele’s government has made a lot of promises, but beyond the security crackdown, many things have fallen through the cracks.
Marisela Ramirez: Like this park here behind me. It has been like this for more than a year. They’ve never finished the construction. Two blocks away, there’s another park that’s totally closed. There hasn’t been any progress for more than a year. Another park is in the same boat.
There is clear evidence that the government does not have the necessary funds to fulfill its promises, which, in the end, are all about aesthetics, without addressing the real problems of the population.
Michael Fox: She says it’s all part of Bukele’s slick image and world-class marketing plan that has enabled him to sell himself at home and abroad.
Marisela Ramirez: We have parks under construction. Renovated hospital facades. They have put up neon lights. They have placed signs in the center of San Salvador. And that appearance of beauty hides behind it misery, poverty, repression, political persecution.
But, of course, people see what’s pretty, right? So it is part of the government’s communication strategy, which has been really effective.
Michael Fox: In the offices of El Salvador’s Association of Community Radios, ARPAS, director Oscar Orellana prepares for a live broadcast.
Oscar Orellana, ARPAS: The press that has denounced corruption and abuse of power has always been attacked. But at this moment, the attacks have gone from a sign of disagreement to aggression.
So, up until now, what we have seen has been criticism, they’ve attacked us. We publish something. They denigrate us. They attack the publication. They attack the journalist. They attack the media outlet, but it doesn’t go any further, for now.
Michael Fox: Those attacks have come from the government and from trolls online. Some journalists have fled the country. Orellano says he believes it’s only the beginning.
Oscar Orellana, ARPAS: What we are seeing right now is just the tip of the iceberg. What we are feeling right now is just the first step in a strategy that may have the goal of closing down alternative media.
Michael Fox: It’s a complicated moment in El Salvador. Both euphoria for so many with the reelection of President Nayib Bukele, and at the same time, so many concerns for human rights violations and for the future of the country’s democracy.
Bukele says he is building a new democracy without the influence of foreign powers.
President Nayib Bukele [recording]: Democracy means the power of the people. Demos and kratos. That’s where the word “democracy” comes from, demos and kratos. “Demos” means people and “kratos” means power. It’s the power of the people.
Michael Fox: But instead of “the power of the people”, Bukele’s democracy looks a lot like “the power of Bukele”.
And he’s influencing others abroad.
Walter Chirinos, PRI Political Party, Peru [recording]: El Salvador is already a model for other countries. Because the moment that you are able to lock up the criminals who had dominated society, it’s a model to be exported. That’s why I came here from Peru, because part of what you see here has to be implemented in my country.
Michael Fox: While Bukele is racing forward to a second term, the official results took several days to be released. In a press conference the Monday after the vote, the Supreme Electoral Court, which oversees the elections, said there was a problem uploading the data of a third of the votes.
The issue is even worse with the legislative assembly votes: only 5% of those have been logged. And that is a major battleground for the country heading forward. Opposition groups are accusing the government of fraud. The Supreme Electoral began to manually count the congressional votes six days after the election.
The future is uncertain. It’s clear that with Bukele’s success with security, the overwhelming majority of the population is onboard. At least, for now.
But there will be resistance.
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