Bukele celebrates four years of government with massive support but also with criticism

President Nayib Bukele celebrates this Thursday four years in power in The Savior with great popularity for hiswar” against the gangs, but with criticism of the validity of democratic values.

Polls indicate that nine out of ten Salvadorans approve of Bukele’s management, which has returned security to the streets, but his anti-gang crusade set off alarm bells among human rights defenders and some analysts warn that he seems to govern without counterweight from other powers. of the State.

LOOK HERE: Torture, mass graves and more than 150 deaths in prisons: the worst face of the exceptional regime imposed by Bukele

“The issue of reducing the operation of gangs can be described as a notable achievement (…), due to the reduction in the number of crimes committed”, he told AFP Carlos Carcachresearcher in the public policy area at the Higher School of Economics and Business.

“The main achievement is the issue of security, the dismantling of gangs“, match Carlos Acevedoformer president of the Central Reserve Bank.

Inmates belonging to the MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs in the new Terrorist Confinement Center (CECOT) prison, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on February 24, 2023. (AFP). (-/)

“It has really generated a new climate where we are beginning to see a revitalization of the productive fabric of microenterprises”, he told AFP.

69,000 detainees

The gangs maintained control of 80% of the country’s territory, according to the government, and were financed with massive extortions, hit man and drug traffic.

To combat them, an emergency regime has been in force for 14 months that allows the police and the army to make arrests without a warrant.

The measure was approved by Congress at the request of Bukele, in response to an escalation of gang violence that claimed the lives of 87 people.

The authorities have been liberating neighborhoods and recovering thousands of houses usurped by gang members. Homicides fell in 2022 to a quarter of the 2019 figure, according to official data.

Threatened by gangs Cristina Arevalo71, had to close his small shop on the outskirts of San Salvador a few years ago, but now he plans to reopen it.

Prisoners and allegations of abuse by the authorities have emerged in El Salvador with the war on the gangs launched by Bukele. (Reuters).

“With the security that exists, I will soon reopen, because they are no longer going to extort me”, says the woman to AFP.

So far nearly 69,000 suspected gang members have been detained, of whom some 5,000 have been released, according to the government.

To lock up the gang members, Bukele built a mega-prison for 40,000 prisoners, the prison “America’s largest”with a severe confinement regime.

MORE INFORMATION: “While they were kneeling, they gave them electric shocks”: the harsh testimonies of the mass incarceration decreed by Bukele

The NGO Cristosal He said that as of April 153 inmates have died.”in state custody”.

Re-election

A 41-year-old publicist who uses social networks, Bukele has faced almost non-existent opposition since the “shake” of 2019, when he defeated the candidates of the traditional parties of the right and left.

With the support of Congress, where he has a large majority, in 2021 he dismissed the five judges of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Courtthe highest court in the country.

He also dismissed the attorney general and a third of the 690 judges (those over 60 or with 30 years of service). USAthe UN and the OAS then they called The Savior to respect the separation of powers.

Soldiers deployed in Nueva Concepción, department of Chalatenango, some 80 km north of San Salvador, on May 17, 2023. (Photo of the Presidency of El Salvador / AFP) (-/)

In addition, Bukele got the Supreme Court to authorize him to seek re-election in 2024, although the Constitution prohibits it, generating a debate about whether the measure is legal.

“The government and the president have everything ready for re-election, not only because of popular support, but also because they have control of the majority of the institutions”, the vice-rector of the Central American University (UCA), told AFP. Omar Serrano.

“It has been a government that has shaken the country“, but what “It has taken away many things, which has undermined the incipient democratic advances that were”, he adds.

For Carcach, the cost of containing the gangs has been that of “implement a regime of exception that implies the disappearance of the rule of law and the reign of the constitution”.

Meanwhile, the Jesuit priest and professor at the UCA Rodolfo Cardenal affirms that in the country one lives “the denial of constitutional law and human rights”.

The controversial path followed by Bukele in El Salvador is seen as an example by some in other parts of Latin America.

It can’t be done “solve a crime by committing a series of violations”, indicates.

Salvadorans endorse Bukele’s methods because “The country has had a dictatorial and authoritarian mentality for a long time, and because it thinks that this is the solution, but in the long term it is not sustainable”, warns Cardinal.

ALSO SEE: Former Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes is sentenced to 14 years in prison for gang truce

bitcoin crash

Another controversial measure by Bukele was the adoption of the bitcoins as legal tender.

In September 2021, El Salvador was the first country to adopt bitcoin, along with the dollar, which has been in circulation since 2001. But the price of the cryptocurrency plummeted and it has had little acceptance in the country.

The adoption of bitcoin “has been the most unpopular measure and the one that has had the least social support”, affirms Serrano, in charge of public opinion studies at the UCA.

Source: Elcomercio