El Salvador has a new president: who is Nayib Bukele? – 02/04/2019

Young and future father, former mayor close to the Y generation and almost an entrepreneur who went into politics for his sympathy with the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, Nayib Bukele won Sunday's presidential election in El Salvador, winning more than 53% of the vote. The irony of life, arrives at the presidency breaking the traditional bipartisanship and leading the great right alliance, the Great Alliance for National Unity (GANA).

Bukele, with a marked political ambition, was expelled from the FMLN, but his insistence allowed him to gain a foothold in GANA, completely opposite party which led him to be mayor, first of Nuevo Cuscatlán (2012-2015) and later of San Salvador (2015-2018).

Known as "L & # 39; swallow", by the emblem of his party, Nayib Bukele, the former charismatic mayor of San Salvador, managed to become president with an irreverent speech before the worn-out traditional politics.

Bukele, who likes to wear jeans, colorful stockings (like Jean Trudeau?) And often a visor cap, was presented under the heavenly flag of the grand alliance for national unity (Win, conservative).

"From tomorrow, it is our turn to start building the El Salvador that we want.The El Salvador we want does not depend on a group, a president, but each one of us. we "

Nayib Bukele

Elected President of El Salvador

With short sentences that claim that politicians "return the stolen", or that "money reaches when nobody is flying", Compbadionate with young people, that he kept connected during the campaign via social networks, presenting their proposals via Facebook Live.

As Mayor of San Salvador he identified with the "millennials", to the point of projecting on the place El Salvador del Mundo a film of the animated series Dragon Ball, participating in competitions of paintball or extreme mechanical games.

"From tomorrow, it's up to all of us to start building the El Salvador we want.The El Salvador we want does not depend on a group, a president, but depends on everyone among us, "he said during the celebration of his victory. Place of the capital.

Bukele was born on July 24, 1981, son of late businessman Armando Bukele, doctor of industrial chemistry and representative of the Salvadoran community of Of Arab-Palestinian origin, and Olga Ortez. His brothers are Yamil and Karim Bukele.

He studied law in the Jesuit Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador, although his opponents questioned him about the fact that he had not been able to graduate with 18 years of working for a company from his father.

The elected president is married to Gabriela Rodríguez and The couple is expecting a baby.

Roots that reach the FMLN

The Bukele family has understood the principles of social justice that they have erected Farabundo Martí Front Left Guerrillas for National Liberation (FMLN) in the eighties, and came to house some of its leaders despite the risk of prison or even death that he represented.

According to the book "Who is Nayib Bukele?", Journalist Geovani Galeas, one afternoon in 1987, the candidate secretly saw the arrival of guerrilla leader Schafik Handal, one of the five commanders of the FMLN.

"As always (Arena and FMLN) thought our employees would never wake up, they tried to tell us relentlessly that it was impossible to do things right."

Nayib Bukele

Elected President of El Salvador

It was like that He inherited from his family sympathy for the former guerrilla after the end of the 12-year civil war, it became a political party in 1992.

In 1999, Bukele, an advertising agency of his family, participated in a presidential campaign that the FMLN could not win, with former commander Facundo Guardado as a candidate.

It was in 2011 that the FMLN was proposed to the Nuevo Cuscatlán Town Hall, a municipality of 10,000 inhabitants located near the capital, where Bukele entered politics by winning the March 2012 election.

In November 2014, as part of World Cities Day, the UN invited him to talk about his transformative management in Nuevo Cuscatlán.

Given its popularity, the FMLN appointed him to recover the office of the mayor of San Salvador, who was in the hands of the right, what he achieved for the period 2015-2018.

As Mayor of San Salvador, his flagship projects have been lighting of all the capital and the recovery and remodeling of part of the historic center.

Expulsion and go right

Disagreements between Bukele and the leaders of the former guerrillas resulted in his expulsion in 2017, the year he was founded. New ideas, a movement that tried to legalize itself as a political party, but did not meet the requirements of the electoral law.

After this frustrated attempt, he sought a place in the Democratic Center (CD) to run under his banner in the presidential elections, but the party was canceled after not reaching at least 50,000 valid votes in the 2018 parliamentary elections.

At the last minute, the now-elected president opted for the only possibility he had left: to try to get the presidency from GANA's hand, whose dome extended the bridge to reach the other shore, the House. next June, when he will officially be named president of the Salvadoran government.

Against bipartisanship

During his campaign, Bukele fiercely criticized the twenty years of government of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) and the nearly ten years of the FMLN.

"As always (Arena and FMLN) thought our people would never wake up, they tried to tell us relentlessly that it was impossible to do things right," he said at the end of the campaign.

Bukele had then planned that would end bipartisanship, to leave "the post-war once and for all".

Under the banner of GANA, Bukele became the first president to govern El Salvador with a different training than that of Arena, which led the country for 20 years (1989-2009), and the FMLN, in power since 2009. He will have as vice president of Felix Ulloa, a 67-year-old lawyer, graduated from the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain.

Ulloa was a magistrate of the first Supreme Electoral Tribunal (1994-1999) created after the peace agreements ending the civil war.

Source: AFP and EFE