On February 4, as El Salvador held presidential elections, current president Nayib Bukele showed up at a polling place accompanied by speakers blasting “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” by R.E.M.
The song choice was deliberate — Bukele was once again trolling critics who claim he’s steering the country toward autocracy. For a while, his Twitter bio read “The World’s Coolest Dictator.”
Since being elected president in 2019, Bukele has made international headlines for what some have described as a millennial persona, eschewing ties and suits in favor of jeans and sunglasses and taking a selfie during his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly. He has famously sold El Salvador as a cryptocurrency paradise, making it the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.
But Bukele’s detractors say he has used the presidency to push El Salvador away from democracy, packing the nation’s judiciary with judges sympathetic to his policies and reshaping electoral law to ensure his political party holds a majority in the legislature.
During his nearly five years in office, Bukele has declared an ongoing state of emergency, using the threat of gang violence to curtail civil liberties. He very publicly stormed the legislature with the aid of the military to demand funding for his policy priorities. And the fact that Bukele ran for reelection at all was unprecedented and probably illegal: El Salvador’s constitution explicitly bars reelection to consecutive presidential terms. Still, he has claimed victory in the vote and few are disputing that he won the presidency, though 60 seats in Congress are being disputed by El Salvador’s electoral body.
Silvia Viñas is the co-host of a new podcast about Bukele, Bukele: El señor de Los Sueños. She says that if you define a democracy only as the people being able to vote, El Salvador has that.
However, democracy is about much more. If Bukele controls…
Read the full article here