Question 1

Who is Nayib Bukele?

Accepted Answer

Bukele is one of the most popular leaders in the world. Opinion polls routinely show him with approval ratings of more than 80 percent. A millennial of Palestinian descent who often appears in jeans and a baseball cap, Bukele worked as a marketing executive before serving as mayor of San Salvador from 2015 to 2018. He won the presidency in 2019, becoming Latin America’s youngest leader and smashing the two-party system that had been in place since the 1979-1992 war between leftist guerrillas and conservative governments. Like Trump, Bukele is something of a showman, dazzling Salvadorans by adopting bitcoin as an official currency, hosting the Miss Universe pageant and building a “mega-prison” to hold 40,000 gang members. His biggest achievement has been dismantling the gangs. As Latin America becomes increasingly worried about organized crime, other politicians have held up Bukele’s tactics as a model.

Question 2

Bukele crushed the gangs. What’s wrong with that?

Accepted Answer

Nothing, according to his supporters. The MS-13 and 18th Street gangs had killed tens of thousands of people, extorted businesses and sliced the country into rival zones controlled by brute force and terror. But Bukele’s government has used emergency powers to carry out its crackdown, suspending various rights and due-process guarantees. It has imprisoned more than 75,000 suspects — giving the country of about 6 million people the world’s highest lockup rate. (The government has since freed about 7,000 people.) Many people were detained arbitrarily, according to human rights groups, which have documented torture and the deaths of scores of the prisoners. Bukele’s vice-presidential candidate, Félix Ulloa, recently told the Associated Press that mistakes were made in the anti-gang offensive, but “there is no police state.” The government plans to hold mass trials of up to 900 people. Amid all this, there has been a nagging question: Was the government’s success due to its tough policies — or did it negotiate with the gangs? Bukele’s government has vowed to show no mercy toward criminals, yet it secretly released a top MS-13 leader known as Crook from prison in 2021, according to the investigative news outlet El Faro. Bukele’s government then cut a deal with another gang member who promised to recapture Crook before Sunday’s election, by working with Mexico’s Jalisco cartel, according to El Faro. (Crook was eventually arrested by Mexican authorities and sent to the United States to face trial.) Bukele’s government has denied negotiating with gangs.

Question 3

What’s at stake in El Salvador’s election?

Accepted Answer

Pro-democracy activists fear a second Bukele term will lead to an ever-greater concentration of power. Eduardo Escobar, head of Acción Ciudadana, a civic group, predicts the country will have “a hegemonic party” and opposition parties “that become ornamental.” Leading up to the election, Bukele’s New Ideas party held around two-thirds of the seats in the 84-member congress; its allies had several more. But an electoral overhaul passed last year will shrink the body to 60 seats. New Ideas could wind up controlling nearly all of them, thanks to what critics call a form of gerrymandering. Bukele’s party has already used its supermajority to oust Supreme Court judges and purge the judiciary. The lawmakers approved a one-month state of emergency in March 2022, after a flare-up of gang violence. They’ve extended it 22 times. Critics say there will be even fewer checks and balances in a country where authorities have harassed journalists, opposition leaders and human rights defenders, and the government has tightened access to information such as crime statistics. Bukele notes citizens overwhelmingly approve of his policies. Óscar Picardo, director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Innovation at Francisco Gavidia University, said he feared the rise of a dictatorship like in neighboring Nicaragua. “I think Nicaragua is a good mirror in which we can see ourselves in the future,” he said.

Question 4

How can Bukele run again, when the constitution says there’s no reelection?

Accepted Answer

In 2021, Supreme Court judges installed by pro-Bukele lawmakers ruled that a president could seek a second consecutive five-year term, as long as he was not in the office “in the immediately preceding period.” Bukele took a leave of absence in December to comply with the ruling. Many Latin American countries ban immediate reelection of a president because of the region’s history of leaders installing themselves in office and becoming authoritarian. The Biden administration blasted the 2021 court ruling on reelection as blatantly unconstitutional and said it “undermines democracy.”

Question 5

What’s Bukele’s relationship with the United States?

Accepted Answer

It’s complicated. Washington has had close ties with the Central American country since the 1980s, when the U.S. government contributed billions of dollars to the battle against insurgents. More than a quarter of Salvadorans have moved to the United States, and irregular migration is a key U.S. concern. Bukele enjoyed a good relationship with Trump, calling him “very nice and cool” during a 2019 visit to the White House. Ties became strained after President Biden took office; his administration frequently accused the Bukele government of democratic backsliding, and slapped sanctions on three of his top aides for alleged corruption and secret negotiations with gangs. The administration has appeared to hold back on public criticism in recent months. In October, a top State Department official, Brian Nichols, met with Bukele. Asked about the leader’s reelection bid, Nichols said Salvadoran voters “can decide whether they agree or disagree with this process.” Former U.S. officials and analysts say the Biden administration changed its approach in response to the Salvadoran leader’s popularity and near-certainty of his reelection. U.S. officials say they have continued to express human rights concerns in private.

‘World’s coolest dictator’ reelected in El Salvador: What to know