El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, left, accompanied by his wife Gabriela Rodriguez, waves to supporters from the balcony of the presidential palace in San Salvador, El Salvador. Photo / AP
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, left, accompanied by his wife Gabriela Rodriguez, waves to supporters from the balcony of the presidential palace in San Salvador, El Salvador. Photo / AP
Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s millennial president, attacked Spanish colonialism and imperialism in a fiery victory speech after he won a landslide victory.
Amid claims he is turning the country into a dictatorship, he boasted to flag-waving crowds below the presidential palace that El Salvador would be the first country with “a one-party system in a democracy”.
“The entire opposition together was pulverised,” Bukele, who once styled himself the “world’s coolest dictator”, told the cheering masses.
The baseball cap-wearing Bukele, 42, has become vastly popular for his war on gangs, but he has also been accused of stifling the courts and silencing opposition.
In his speech, he said a Spanish journalist had recently asked him why he wants to dismantle democracy.
“I told him: But what democracy are you talking about? Democracy means the power of the people, and if the Salvadorans want this, who is a Spanish journalist to tell us Salvadorans what we should do?” Bukele said.
He said the idea of democracy the journalist spoke to him about was “what his bosses tell him, there in Spain”, adding: “But that is not democracy; that would be colony, imperialism, elitism, plutocracy, you can call it whatever you want, but it is not called democracy.”
Early figures show that Bukele has won 85 per cent of the vote.
Supporters of Salvador President Nayib Bukele celebrate results of a general election in downtown San Salvador. Photo / AP
In his first term, Bukele used his huge majority in parliament to suspend civil liberties and jail 75,000 people without charges, producing a steep decline in what was one of the world’s worst murder rates.
Critics have also accused Bukele of stuffing the courts and other state institutions with supporters, effectively making the country a one-man state. El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal last year permitted Bukele to run for a second term even though the country’s constitution prohibits it.
Bukele counters that such criticism comes from outside El Salvador, from “liberal elites”, including the financier George Soros amongst his presumed enemies.
Bukele was congratulated on his victory by China, which has invested in the country in recent years. Bukele has championed the introduction of Bitcoin as legal tender and plans to build Bitcoin City, a tax-free crypto haven powered by geothermal energy from a volcano.
Nayib Bukele, left, accompanied by his wife Gabriela Rodriguez, waves to supporters from the balcony of the presidential palace in San Salvador. Photo / AP
“We are not substituting democracy because El Salvador has never had democracy. This is the first time in history that El Salvador has had democracy,” Bukele said.
Referring to the Spanish journalist he said had asked about the alleged erosion of democratic rights in El Salvador, Bukele said Spain should show his country respect.
“We respect your hereditary monarchy, but you are obliged to respect us,” he said.
Professor Carlos Malamud, senior analyst for Latin America at Spain’s Elcano Royal Institute think-tank, said that there was no particular bilateral tension between San Salvador and Madrid, but added that the Spanish press’s coverage of Bukele’s re-election campaign had been more extensive than that of other countries and included more criticism of human rights abuses.
“In the end, it’s a free hit for him to connect this anti-colonial stance against Spain with his general attack on international elites he says are lining up against him,” Prof Malamud told the Telegraph.
