Bukele, Authoritarianism Spreads Throughout the Continent

Nayib Bukele managed to get reelected after putting a spin on an apparent constitutional prohibition, leaning on the control he exercises of the judicial branch. Did the Salvadoran president cross the red line of dictatorship?

Nayib Bukele - Autoritarismo - El Salvador

By Suhelis Tejero

Nayib Bukele didn’t wait for Sunday’s official results to proclaim himself winner of the election that will allow him to stay in power at least five more years. In his own words, his triumph “came with over 85% of the votes and at least 58 of 60 of the representative seats in the Legislative Assembly,” a fact that will guarantee him control of the legislature. And, in a state of euphoria, he announced that “it would be the first time that a sole party exists in a fully democratic system in a country.”

Also on Sunday, in a press conference, the president took his proclamation even further:  “We are not substituting democracy because El Salvador never had a democracy. This is the first time in history that El Salvador has a democracy, and those are not my words, those are the words of the people (…) The definition of democracy, the real one, not the one by the elite, comes from demos and kratos, the power of the people (…) People are saying ‘we want a state of exception, we want the president’s security policy’,” Bukele said.

The next day, criticism by the digital news outlet El Faro was equally forceful: “The brief, very brief democratic era in Salvadoran history has come to an end. Nayib Bukele just included his name in the list of one of Central America’s worst political traditions: dictatorship”.  

The reelected president concocted his participation in this election back in 2021, when his party Nuevas Ideas ousted the magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of Nicaragua. He subsequently replaced them disregarding due legal processes. Last year, those new magistrates endorsed the president’s immediate reelection, even though the Constitution forbids it. Justices of the high court on Bukele’s side argued that the constitutional text didn’t respond to the current needs and that only the people could determine whether he remained in power or not.  They only demanded Bukele step away from his position for five months prior to the election, which of course, he did.

These legal gimmicks concurred with a state of exception that has been enforced for almost two years, and that has put some constitutional guarantees on hold, such as the presumption of innocence and the right of defense. Even though justified with the crackdown against the violence of Salvadoran gangs (known as Maras), national and international civil organizations have denounced that Bukele’s firm hand has resulted in human rights violations.

Additionally, the measure has been used to silence dissenting voices through harassment, persecution and criminalization. A journalistic investigation by Malayerba and CONNECTAS revealed that in 2022, the organization Mesa por el Derecho a Defender Derechos registered an average of one aggression denunciation to defenders or journalists every 27 hours. 

But, is it possible to determine if a government is a democracy or a dictatorship as straightforward as the Salvadoran president does? Last year, the University of Gothenburg, through the V-Dem Institute, warned in a report that El Salvador had ceased to be a democracy. Back then, no one knew that “the world’s coolest dictator” (as Bukele identified himself in his account on X (formerly Twitter)), intended to remain in power despite the country’s prohibition on immediate reelection.

This institute has rated the government of El Salvador as an electoral autocracy, in other words, a system centered on the figure of Bukele. The president, after legitimately winning his first election, governs without legal restrictions, although with the population’s support – at least for now.

Likewise, Kurt Weyland, professor at University of Texas, believes that there is a populist regime that tilted towards autocracy in El Salvador. In his recent study Why Democracy Survives Populism, Weyland analyzed the 40 populist models that have existed in Europe and Latin America since 1985; he concluded that El Salvador is the newest case in the region, and one of the few that turned into an authoritarian system after being a democracy. 

“(Bukele) has leveraged his popularity to launch a vigorous attack on democracy, putting rights on hold and forcing the Legislative Assembly to remove the five justices of the Constitutional Chamber, and the attorney general, in an attempt to repeal a 2014 ruling that would have blocked his intention to run for a second five-year term,” Weyland writes in his study.

Salvadoran journalist Edwin Segura claims that there aren’t many doubts of Bukele’s authoritarian disposition, who as a ruler controls “absolutely all of the institutions.” Yet that way of governing contrasts his high popular acceptance rate. “Bukele’s exercise of power will continue being autocratic and dictatorial, but we will dwell on the difficulty of calling him that since he was elected by popular vote, albeit bypassing the law,” Segura mentions. 

The director of Centro Internacional de Estudios Politicos y Sociales AIP-Panama, Harry Brown Arauz, agrees that Bukele stands in a gray area of political definitions, from an academic point of view. He asserts that as a ruler, he has failed democracy by concentrating power and taking over democratic institutions, but that his support (by way of votes or popularity) allows him to uphold legitimacy. 

Brown Arauz sums up this complex contrast: democracy rests on a republican and on a popular pillar. The former is based on respectfully leading the public institutions that defend rights and sustain checks and balances, as well as separation of powers; whereas the latter implies the support of the majority of the population, be it through votes or popularity rates. “As long as elections are held and he is granted the popular vote, we are in a gray area in which authoritarian traits are identified, yet not entirely,” Brown Arauz adds.

The political scientist, who has studied Central American populism, adds that this type of leaders justify lingering in power, and because they present themselves as redeemers, they convince voters that it is necessary for them to hold on to power.

Less Freedom and More Opaqueness 

Bukele regards non-governmental organizations and media outlets as his two most visible “foes”.  Both sectors have exposed human rights violations committed during the state of exception, and questionable agreements with gang members to pacify El Salvador – which, for years, has been one of the most violent and dangerous countries in the world.

The digital news outlet El Faro has been subject to his most bitter criticism. Pro-Bukele groups have been displeased by articles such as the recent investigation that reveals how the government conspired with a gang leader to recapture “Crook”, the leader of the Mara Salvatrucha-13 gang who had been illegally released in mid 2022. El Faro has taken so much heat that last year it moved its entire administrative operation to Costa Rica, out of fear of retaliation. 

Gabriel Labrador, journalist of the outlet, is concerned that Bukele is intensifying his antidemocratic behavior with a previously-demonstrated repertoire of attacks on the press and civil organizations, displaying total lack of transparency in public policy decisions, and with political persecutions, such as the one weighing over Ruben Zamora (leader of the FMLN). “El Faro has deemed this government a dictatorship,” he confirms.

Labrador recalls that the APES (Journalists’ Association of El Salvador) registered 300 attacks on the press in 2023, double than compared with the prior year, and that on Sunday’s election day alone there were 173 denunciations.

“An authoritarian government was consolidated in its first term, and now with this speech of an apparent victory, President Bukele has made it clear that he will follow the same path, that he dislikes the press, and he even invited the media to side with him and stop criticizing him,” he explains.

On his part, journalist Edwin Segura says that the population is unaware of the antidemocratic dangers behind the government of Bukele, despite already enduring some of its limitations. “People refuse to say freedom of expression doesn’t exist, but when you ask them if they are speaking freely, most just don’t dare to do it,” Segura. emphasizes. 

A Weakened Latin American Democracy 

Still, Salvadorans were willing to massively reelect a man such as Bukele, who has disrespected both the Constitution and public institutions. What does that say about the state of democracy in the region?

Primarily, it is very revealing that an antidemocratic president such as El Salvador’s has the highest popularity rate among rulers in Latin America, according to Gallup, Bukele’s support is almost 90%. A figure that seems to underscore low satisfaction levels pertaining to democracy in Latin America.

In its 2023 Report, Latinobarometro referred to a continuing and systematic deterioration of democracy, and the worst part was “the increased indifference regarding the type of regime, the preference and favorable attitudes towards authoritarianism, the collapse of governments’ performance and of the image of political parties. In several countries, democracy is in a critical state, and other countries don’t have a democracy anymore,” states the survey that was published last year. Additionally, the percentage of citizens supporting authoritarianism is sprawling, Mexico is leading the way with a third of its population, followed by Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, where more than 20% of its citizens wish they had an authoritarian government. The aforementioned is testament to a serious credibility crisis of the democratic system, which for years was considered as the ideal form of government in a continent interested in leaving its dictatorial past (mostly military) behind. The calamity is that this is a regional expression of a phenomenon that is taking over the world, of which not even the United States (purported beacon of democracy) is safe.

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