When Democracy Fails People

El Salvador votes in presidential election that the ‘world’s coolest dictator’ has clear path to win

MEJICANOS, El Salvador (AP) — Salvadorans are voting Sunday in presidential and legislative elections that experts say are largely about the tradeoff between security and democracy.

With soaring approval ratings and virtually no competition, Nayib Bukele is almost certainly headed for a second term as president.

El Salvador’s constitution prohibits reelection. Nonetheless, about eight out of 10 of voters support Bukele… That’s despite Bukele taking steps throughout his first term that lawyers and critics say chip away at the country’s system of checks and balances.

Bukele’s administration has arrested more than 76,000 people since a gang crackdown began in March 2022. The massive arrests have been criticized for a lack of due process, but Salvadorans have retaken their neighborhoods long controlled by gangs.

José Dionisio Serrano, 60, was proud to be the first person in line at 6 a.m. Sunday as voters started to line up… The soccer teacher said he planned to vote for Bukele and his party New Ideas.

… gang members shot him and threatened his life. Asked about concerns that Bukele was seeking reelection despite a constitutional ban, he brushed it aside, saying, “What the people want is something else.”

El Salvador’s traditional parties from the left and right that created the vacuum that Bukele first filled in 2019 remain a shambles. Alternating in power for some three decades, the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) were thoroughly discredited by their own corruption and inefficacy. Their presidential candidates this year are polling in the low single digits.

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Bukele, the self-described “world’s coolest dictator,” has gained fame for his brutal crackdown on gangs, in which more than 1% of the country’s population has been arrested.

While his administration is accused of committing widespread human rights abuses, violence has also plummeted, in a country known just a few years ago as one of the most dangerous in the world.

Because of that, voters like 55-year-old businesswoman Marleny Mena are willing to overlook concerns that Bukele has taken undemocratic steps to concentrate power.

…Bukele and his party are increasingly looked to as a case study for a wider global rise in authoritarianism.

“There’s this growing rejection of the basic principles of democracy and human rights, and support for authoritarian populism among people who feel that, concepts like democracy and human rights and due process have failed them,” said Tyler Mattiace, Americas researcher for Human Rights Watch.