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Nayib Bukele overwhelmingly won the presidential election in El Salvador on Sunday February 4, 2024, obtaining, according to a CID-Gallup exit poll, an impressive support of 87% of the votes. Nuevas Ideas, his party, is assured of a large majority in Parliament.
The 42-year-old re-elected president expressed his conviction that El Salvador now knows a true democracy. “This is the first time that there is democracy in the country,” said Nayib Bukele. “There is no dictatorship, people vote in democracy. The people say: I am not oppressed, I am happy.”
A relentless security policy
The indisputable popularity of this leader, often described as a "cool dictator", is attributable to his implacable security policy implemented during his first mandate. This merciless struggle, which began two years ago, transformed the capital, once ranked among the most dangerous in the world, into one of the safest in the space of a few months. Nayib Bukele's policy succeeded in reducing the number of homicides in the country by 70%.
75,000 arrests
President Nayib Bukele took a decidedly radical approach to remedying the situation in El Salvador: in March 2022, he established a state of emergency, authorizing the deployment of the army on Salvadoran streets and allowing warrantless arrests . Since then, as many as 75,000 people have been arrested, an unprecedented measure for a population of 6.5 million. In addition, the head of state oversaw the construction of a mega prison that he called a “terrorism containment center,” where no lawyers are allowed to enter and all contact with the outside world is prohibited.
For years, El Salvador had been ravaged by the two main maras (gangs), Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, which sowed terror in every street of the country. Their members, often sporting tattoos up to their faces to recognize each other, controlled a large part of the territory, practicing racketeering, assassination, and establishing a climate of extreme violence. The settling of scores often ended with the dismemberment or decapitation of the adversaries. Getting around the streets of San Salvador sometimes required significant detours if the taxi driver had not paid the required amount to the appropriate people.
Going out into the streets at night was unthinkable without the protection of one of the gangs.
Nayib Bukele compared El Salvador's previous situation to widespread cancer. “El Salvador had cancer with metastases. 85% of the territory was dominated by gangs,” he recalls. "We have done surgery, chemo, radiotherapy and we are going to come out cured, without the cancer in the bands. We have eliminated what was killing us. What now awaits El Salvador is a period of prosperity."
A broken economy
This February 4, Nayib Bukele promised an era of prosperity "because there is no longer any brake on business creation, no more brake on studies, no more brake on work, no more brake on tourism". According to the president, victory over insecurity will allow the country to deploy its economic potential, an urgent necessity given that 70% of jobs are in the informal sector, thus depriving workers of health and retirement benefits. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal) estimates that 30% of the Salvadoran population lives in poverty.
The country's economic reality is largely based on remesas, these money transfers made by expatriates, which generate 21% of GDP. In this dollarized economy, Nayib Bukele tried to make bitcoin the official currency in 2021, a decision criticized by the IMF due to the high volatility of this cryptocurrency.
Nayib Bukele's security policy and his successes are arousing keen interest in other Latin American countries plagued by insecurity, both from the new Ecuadorian president, Daniel Noboa, and from his Argentine counterpart, Javier Milei.
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