Who is Najib Bukele Salvadoran President? | Info

Source: Instagram/naybbukele

He is powerful and adored: enthusiastic Republicans like Marco Rubio make pilgrimages to him, and he recently received a standing ovation in Washington, albeit at a gathering of ultraconservatives. He is a populist in a long line of Latin American populists, but with a talent for communication and a masterful use of social networks that has rarely been seen before, is how AP describes him.

He knows how to ensure popularity: a few days ago he released a suspected gang member from prison because his son, soccer player Marcel El Chiqui Diaz, asked him to.

The president of El Salvador, 42-year-old Najib Bukele, called himself a cool dictator, and German Spiegel presents him as a hipster-autocrat. He gained popularity by mercilessly destroying the gangs that for years had control over the Central American country, torn by a civil war from 1980 to 1992 that left the country with 250,000 dead and a third of its population displaced. The war against the gangs brought Bukele great popularity, but also accusations of autocratic rule and massive human rights violations.

After the country was rocked by a wave of bloody criminal crackdowns two years ago, Najib Bukele declared a state of emergency in March 2022 and declared war on gangs. He arrested 80,000 people, which is more than one percent of the population of El Salvador, reports the Associated Press.

And succeeded. On a wave of popularity, he was re-elected president in February, although according to the Constitution, he did not run for a second term. He won with almost 85 percent of the vote.

Bukele was criticized for arresting many with little evidence. In January, Bukele’s vice president, Felik Uloa, admitted to AP that they made a mistake by arresting those who had not committed crimes. Around 7,000 people arrested during the state of emergency have since been released from prison. Salvadoran prisons are called torture camps, many languish too long awaiting trial.

Bukele knows that the football player’s father is more important than others: while he is heavily criticized by human rights associations and international organizations, the self-proclaimed “handiest dictator in the world” successfully uses social media, takes pictures with celebrities, and regularly appears at sports and entertainment events.

He turned the once most dangerous country in the Bukele region into one of the safest – and thus became the idol of Latin America. Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa is now taking similar measures, in Argentina Security Ministry Patricia Bullrich announced. Bukele recently offered aid to Haiti, also wracked by gang violence.

Until Bukele took office, gangs controlled much of the country, and the homicide rate was for a time the highest in the world. Today, you can go out at night without the risk of being kidnapped or attacked. Parents and children are once again walking through the center of the capital, San Salvador. From a failed state, Bukele turned El Salvador into a role model for others. But at what cost?

In February 2020, Bukele stormed parliament with an army to force lawmakers to approve $109 million for security forces. Since he took power in 2019, the homicide rate per 100,000 people has fallen, according to official data, from 51 in 2018 to 2.4 in 2023. But how he achieved it is problematic: first he made a pact with the gangs, and when that didn’t work, he started mass arrests.

Bukele is not the first president of El Salvador to negotiate with gangs, and when the media reported that the government not only negotiated, but also gave benefits to gang leaders in exchange for maintaining a lower level of bloodshed, Bukele strongly denied it. But investigative journalists and American services, as The New Yorker writes, documented that the government gave gang leaders money, pardons and protected them from execution in exchange for support in the elections and an end to liquidation.

But the deal fell through, one of the main gangs, MS-13, on March 26, 2022, killed 62 people in one day across the country, which was a shock even for El Salvador. Bukele then changed tactics and declared a state of emergency, with mass arrests of all suspected gang members. He sought and received special powers: arrest without a warrant, without access to a lawyer, broad powers to intercept communications.

Parliament extends the state of emergency every month, which is limited to 30 days according to the Constitution. This allows the police and the army to detain suspects for up to 15 days without charge. In addition, Bukele has appointed judges loyal to him in the Supreme Court, and the chief state attorney is his ally. A new law was passed, according to which gang membership is punishable by 20 years in prison. Suspects can be tried in groups, so everything goes much faster. Many mobsters were sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.

Bukele allocated money for the construction of a large, high-security prison that could house 40,000 people in the future. Most Salvadorans support the president’s law and order policies. Unfortunately, many innocent people were arrested, but overall Bukele did the right thing, they are convinced. Critics on the other hand say that you can be arrested just because of tattoos. According to the Cristosal organization, 3,779 people are still unjustly imprisoned. Most of them come from very poor families.

As many Salvadorans are delighted with the return of order and security, few want to hear from human rights activists. Claudia Ortiz, a member of the opposition big-right center, says that it remains to be seen whether the country, which had to fight hard for democracy, will turn into a dictatorship. So far, El Salvador, according to her opinion, lives in a hybrid system, in a mixture of autocracy and democracy. Demonstrations are not prohibited, and the army is not under control either.

Salvadoran gangs emerged on the streets of Los Angeles in the eighties. Many gang members were later deported to their homeland. After the end of the civil war in the nineties, El Salvador was full of weapons, and the economy was slow to recover, so tens of thousands of young people went into crime. Drugs and weapons were traded, people were kidnapped and extorted. Within a few years, gangs became more powerful than the state. The largest gang, Mara Salvatrucha, is thought to have 78,000 members, and the second, Barrio 18, is thought to have 41,000 members, according to research portal InSight Crime.

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Before entering politics, Bukele was a public relations expert. Communicates primarily through social networks. At public appearances, he likes to appear in informal clothes, often with a baseball cap. He sees the future of his country in the digital revolution. He made bitcoin the second national currency alongside the dollar, promotes startup companies. Bukele has his own loyal digital army that constantly defends and praises him. And attacks anyone who might be against it. Activists, journalists, judges, prosecutors and others are subjected to fierce attacks.

Last August, the president’s former security adviser was detained, after he accused a representative of the ruling party of being connected to the drug trade. He was accused of being a “double agent” who leaked information to journalists, a foreign government and a former president who was convicted in absentia for negotiating with gangs.

He died in state custody at the beginning of February, and his lawyer claims that there were visible signs of torture on his body. The government is a threat, a permanent fear, says activist Veronica Reina. Numerous critics of the government have left the country, and those who have remained say that they are much more cautious in public appearances. In the second term, Bukele can only be even more brutal, they fear.

On the other hand, Bukele gave many citizens new hope. Many Salvadorans who once immigrated to the US to escape violence and poverty are now returning. But what if one day the state of emergency is lifted?

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