MEXICO CITY – In his first two years in office, the president of El Salvador marched troops to the country’s legislature, defied Supreme Court rulings, posted photos of scantily clad gang members huddled on a prison floor and sent the army to to hold anyone who breaks quarantine.
Salvadorans can not get enough of him. President Nayib Bukele, who enjoys an approval rate of about 90 percent in the polls, is expected to extend his mandate even further in the legislative election on Sunday, which could yield a decisive victory on Sunday.
The vote can Mr. Bukele also gives new powers: control over a legislature dominated by the opposition, along with the chance to change the Constitution and to rebuild the government in its image. If his party and its allies win two-thirds of the seats, they could replace the attorney general and appoint new Supreme Court justices.
In an interview, Mr. Bukele’s vice president, Felix Ulloa, admits that some of the president’s actions were questionable.
“The president has had a few outbursts,” he said. Ulloa conceded, ‘but it should be understood as such as outbursts, as mistakes, and not as a trend, as an attitude, as the birth of a new dictatorship.’
Mr Bukele’s tendency towards confrontation will be tempered, said Mr. Ulloa said once he has a legislator who is not determined to block his agenda. He invited the world to measure the president based on how he rules after the election.
“We will be able to evaluate the true character of this government, whether it is a democratic government that serves the interests of the Salvadoran people,” he said. Ulloa said. “On the contrary, if it turns out that the president, as claimed, is an authoritarian who wants to concentrate power and establish an anti-democratic model, then it will also come to light.”
Part of what draws attention to Mr. Bukele established is his approach, which can only be described as very online. The president is a 39-year-old, self-styled political outsider and delights her followers by trolling his enemies on Twitter and delighting in his triumph on TikTok. He uses social media to bring out the El Salvador press, attack the attorney general and declare that he refuses to comply with the Supreme Court’s rulings.
And although Mr. Bukele El Salvador helped control the spread of the coronavirus better than many of his neighbors, he received international condemnation from human rights groups for his strongman exhibits and the repressive measures taken during the pandemic.
Last year, he sent soldiers into the legislature to try to pressure lawmakers to approve a loan to finance law enforcement. (Vice President Ulloa calls the deployment a ‘mistake’.)
Mr. Bukele also sent soldiers and police to detain people in so-called maternity centers in quarantine. He ignored several orders from the Supreme Court to stop the practice. And he has been widely criticized for posting photos of prisoners huddled in their underwear.
Critics are worried that if he gains unrestrained control of the country after Sunday’s election, he will show even less self-control.
‘The fear is that he will concentrate the powers of the state. “There will be no real judicial or legislative independence, and there will be no way to limit his power,” said Mari Carmen Aponte, an ambassador to the Obama administration in El Salvador.
Mr. Bukele’s relationship with the Biden government did not start easily. The Associated Press reported in February that the Salvadoran president had flown to Washington and asked to meet with members of the government, but he was rejected.
The awkward episode highlighted the test that Biden’s victory for leaders like Mr. Bukele showed.
Under the Trump administration, managing relations with the United States has been simple: As long as Mr. Bukele and his peers in Central America the immigration agenda of mr. Trump enforced, they could expect little interference from their northern neighbor if they took challenging steps at home.
The White House’s new residents sent a very different message. Days after the inauguration, Juan Gonzalez, Biden’s leading adviser on Latin America, offered a blunt review in an interview with El Faro, a Salvadoran news website.
“We are going to disagree with Bukele’s government,” he said. Gonzalez said. “And we are going to express our concerns in a respectful and well-meaning way.”
The fear of mr. Bukele echoed in Washington as it became clear how well his party would perform in Sunday’s election.
“Here is a man who has not complied with the basic democratic norms, and you are giving him an uncontrolled power,” former Obama adviser Dan Restrepo said in an interview. “Uncontrolled power rarely ends well in the region, and instability can only increase migratory pressure, which is in nobody’s interest.”
For Salvadorans accustomed to generations of political leaders who paid lip service to democracy while enriching themselves from the public to, the transgressions of Mr. Bukele not much.
The president avoided an abundance of coronavirus cases in hospitals and handed out cash to poor Salvadorans to numb the pain of the economic crisis. And although local news media reported that a sharp drop in murders among Mr. Bukele was the result of a government agreement with criminal gangs, many Salvadorans are just happy to have a break from violence.
‘People may write about the dangers of Bukele, but the reason why it does not appeal to people is that they say:’ How does it feed me? How to reduce crime rates? “” Tim Muth, who served as an election observer in El Salvador, wrote and wrote a blog about the country’s politics.
“The Salvadoran public finally decides it’s OK, ‘he added,’ because this guy is delivering a certain number of things to us. ‘
In Chalatenango, a small town north of the capital, Bukele’s supporters were furious at the prospect of their president consolidating power and at the deterioration of the country’s political parties for decades.
“The people woke up and realized what we had been living through all these years. Nothing more. We want change, ”said Armando Gil, 59, a car salesman.
Mr. Gil was a longtime supporter of the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, but was disgusted by repeated corruption scandals involving ‘people who deceived us’.
In 2019, he worked for Mr. Bukele voted, believing that the president’s opponents were frustrated because they could not control him.
“He does not work for the small minority that has always ruled and dominated our country,” he said. Gil said. “That’s what they do not like.”
Nelson Renteria Meza reported on Chalatenango, El Salvador.