“Bitcoin dictator” continues
Bukele declares himself the winner of the El Salvador election
February 5, 2024, 11:27 a.m
Listen to article
This audio version was artificially generated. More info | Send feedback
In 2019, Nayib Bukele was elected president of El Salvador and began a merciless fight against criminal gangs and the collapse of the economy. Although direct re-election is actually forbidden, he declares himself the winner. Human rights activists warn of the weakening of democracy.
El Salvador’s controversial President Nayib Bukele is on the verge of a clear victory in the presidential and parliamentary elections in the Central American country – even though he would not be allowed to run for a second term according to the constitution. After almost a third of the votes were counted, the conservative head of state received a vote share of almost 83 percent, as the highest electoral court announced. Bukele himself had already declared himself the winner of the elections almost an hour after the vote counting began.
His party Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas) had also won at least 58 of the 60 seats in parliament, he wrote at Around 6.2 million citizens were called to vote, including 741,000 Salvadorans abroad.
Allegations of human rights violations
Bukele is known for his tough approach to crime and his authoritarian course. In a press conference, Bukele rejected accusations that he was ruling his country autocratically and imprisoning innocent people en masse. “El Salvador was the murder capital of the world,” said the former advertising executive. Now it is the safest country on the American continent. The election result will clearly express the will of the Salvadorans.
El Salvador’s constitution actually prohibits the direct re-election of the president. However, constitutional judges loyal to the government allowed Bukele to run for a second, five-year term. In order to circumvent the ban, the head of state took a leave of absence for six months on December 1st – until the day of the planned inauguration on June 1st. Meanwhile, a loyal official formally took over day-to-day political affairs, meaning Bukele’s influence remained virtually unimpaired. The former mayor of the capital San Salvador has been president since 2019 and, among other things, introduced the digital currency Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador.
Before he dubbed himself the “philosopher king” on X, Bukele had described himself as the “coolest dictator in the world” in 2021. In the fight against the criminal gangs in the country, the so-called Maras, he declared a state of emergency in March 2022. As a result, basic rights such as freedom of assembly were restricted. More than 75,000 suspected gang members have since been arrested, most only on suspicion and without access to lawyers. Critics warn of a further weakening of the separation of powers and democratic control under Bukele’s aegis in Central America’s smallest country.