El Salvador votes ‘world’s coolest dictator’ has clear path to victory in presidential election

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — El Salvadorans head to the polls Sunday in presidential and parliamentary elections that largely pit trade-offs between security and democracy.

With soaring approval ratings and virtually no competition, Nayib Bukele is almost certain to seek a second term as president.

El Salvador’s constitution prohibits reelection. Despite this, about eight in 10 voters support Mr. Bukele, according to a January poll by the University of Central America. This is despite Mr. Bukele taking steps throughout his first term to undermine the country’s system of checks and balances, lawyers and commentators say.

But El Salvador’s traditional parties of the left and right, which created the vacuum that Bukele first filled in 2019, remain in disarray. The conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which have been in power for almost 30 years, have been completely discredited by their own corruption and incompetence. Voter turnout for their presidential candidates this year is in the low single digits.

Bukele, who calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” has gained fame for his brutal crackdown on gangs, which has seen more than 1% of the country’s population arrested.

His government 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.

That leaves voters like Marleny Mena, a 55-year-old businesswoman, willing to ignore concerns that Mr. Bukele is taking undemocratic steps to centralize power.

Mena, a street vendor in once gang-dominated downtown San Salvador, walks the streets fearing he will accidentally cross from one gang’s turf to another, leading to serious consequences. He said he was scared. That fear has disappeared since Bukele began his crackdown.

“He needs a little more time. He needs the time he needs to continue to improve the country,” Mena said.

In the run-up to Sunday’s vote, Bukele made no public campaign appearances. Instead, the populist taped a simple message recorded from his couch and plastered it on social media and TV screens across the country. If he and his New Ideas Party do not win this year’s election, “the war on gangs will be in jeopardy.”

“The opposition will be able to achieve its only real plan to free gang members and use them to return to power,” he said.

Still, Bukele, 42, and his party are increasingly being seen as an example of the global rise of authoritarianism.

“There is a growing rejection of basic principles of democracy and human rights, and support for authoritarian populism is growing among people who feel that concepts such as democracy, human rights, and due process are useless.” said Tyler Mathias, Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch. .