Bukele assumes office today without opposition

With little presence of the opposition and high popularity, Nayib Bukele He begins his second term today as president of El Salvadorwithin the framework of a war against gangs.

This 42-year-old millennial publicist, re-elected in the February 4 elections with 85% of the votes, will govern for another five years with almost total control of Congress and the rest of the State institutions.

Bukele will take the oath in a ceremony scheduled for 8:00 (local time) at the National Palace, in the historic center of San Salvador, to whose square he summoned Salvadorans en masse.

Among the dignitaries, the attendance of Argentine President Javier Milei stands out, with whom he agrees on conservative policies and sympathies towards the former US ruler Donald Trump. Paraguayan President Santiago Peña and King Felipe of Spain will also attend.

Bukele defines himself as a “cool dictator” to mock those who accuse him of authoritarianism and of maintaining power thanks to like-minded magistrates who interpreted the law to allow his re-election, despite being prohibited in the Constitution.

What he has shown is that the law is irrelevant, and that he can do what he wants and how he wants,” said social researcher Carlos Carcach.

Considered the most popular president in Latin America according to the Latinobarómetro organization, Bukele came to power in 2019 promising to subdue the gangs, to which he attributes 120,000 deaths in three decades.

THEY ACCUSE ABUSE

Under his government, the president maintains, El Salvador went from being the “most dangerous country in the world” without war to “the safest in the Western Hemisphere.”

But for this, El Salvador lives under an emergency regime that it established in March 2022 and accumulates 80,300 alleged gang members detained without a court order.

The human rights organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International denounce deaths and torture, and thousands of innocent people among the eight thousand people who had to be released.

After taking neighborhoods and streets of almost the entire country from the gangs, analysts point out that their challenge will be the economy, since poverty punishes almost a third of the population.

With a Congress where his party, Nuevas Ideas, has 54 of the 60 seats, Bukele has free rein to reform the Constitution, after deputies approved in April a mechanism to accelerate possible changes.

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They have left the door open to be able to carry out any constitutional reform,” says analyst and former guerrilla commander, Eugenio Chicas. The opposition parties are “breathing,” but they are “in a coma,” he added.

When he won in February, Bukele said it will be “the first time there is a single-party system in a democracy.”

With gelled hair and a trimmed beard, Bukele built his image through social networks, where he usually writes in English.

In

A cult phenomenon was installed in the country,” thanks to its media machinery, says the Director of Research at the Francisco Gavidia University, Óscar Picardo.

DETECT EXPLOSIVES

Yesterday, the Salvadoran Police reported that they arrested seven war veterans who were allegedly planning to commit explosive attacks in the Central American country today within the framework of Nayib Bukele’s presidential inauguration.

In various messages on the social network

In addition, the agency published an audio where one of the alleged suspects can be heard, as well as a list of their names.

Among them is José Melara, former deputy of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front party.

The police identify him as “the financier of these violent plans.”

PROFILE

• Nayib Bukele was born on July 24, 1981 in San Salvador, son of the late industrial chemist and representative of the Palestinian community Armando Bukele.
• He worked from the age of 18 in his father’s advertising agency that ran campaigns for the former guerrilla Frente Farabundo Martí.
• He began his political career in 2012 and with the FMLN he was mayor of the town of Nuevo Cuscatlán and San Salvador from 2015 to 2018. Due to an internal incident he was expelled.

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