Nayib Bukele, a 2.0 president with a vocation of absolute power

CARACAS.- The President of El Salvador Here to watch frightened the international community with its attack on the judiciary and the prosecution in an authoritarian delirium in the heat of the fervor and the majority support it arouses in Salvadoran society. Alarm yes, but no surprise: his desire for absolute power was seen as coming from the start of his political career. Bukele, 39, didn’t fool anyone.

“He’s a classic populist, but in variant 2.0. Postmodern ”, summarizes the historian Armando Chaguaceda. “The coolest and handsome president in the world,” as he defined himself on his Twitter account.

The leader who has cornered the two parties in power since the end of the Salvadoran civil war comes precisely from one of them, the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN). The former guerrilla party, a former ally of Chavism, placed him at the head of the office of the mayor of the capital, San Salvador, from 2015 to 2018 on his launch pad for the presidency. His mandate there advances what will later come to the head of the nation: the same reputation as a good manager, successful in the fight against violence, but with obvious authoritarian gestures. And always against critical journalism and with prosecutors in their sights.

The current totalitarian attack on the magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice and on the prosecutor has a precedent: when Bukele raised the baton in San Salvador, he appeared before the attorney general with a battalion of a thousand faithful. It was suspected that he had maneuvered in the world 2.0, the one he loves so much, to attack the newspaper Printing.

Already in the presidency, attacks on the media continued, especially against the digital newspaper Lighthouse, which he accused of money laundering for receiving international donations. The same as the revolutions in Cuba or Venezuela.

It is precisely in the oil country that the origin of a scandal revealed in its time by another local media, according to which the mayor Bukele would have received funds from the Bolivarian Alliance of Peoples (ALBA).

The millennial cell phone fanatic decided to part ways with the FMLN in time and set out to conquer the country with an interposed party, the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA), in the first round of 2019, to form more his late, New ideas, for parliamentarians, in which he swept.

The sages say that the undemocratic impulse is carried within and that all it takes is an excuse for it to spring and air firmly. This is what happened when Bukele took over Parliament last year with a military detachment, another of the maneuvers that precede the one underway and in which he has already made it clear what will happen next.

What is Bukele’s ideology? His close friends compare him to great leaders like Fidel Castro or Mao, but not because of his ideas, but because of his personality.. And it is that a millennium is neither on the right nor on the left, much more in the “Twittercracy” from which he imposes decrees, dismisses ministers or distributes slogans to the population. This is one of the main arts of Bukele, a publicist rather than a politician, who with the message “Give back what was stolen” shattered the bipartisanship that had reigned in the small Central American country for almost 30 years. .

There was no shortage of reasons: former President Mauricio Funes (FMLN) is on the run in Nicaragua and Tony Saca (ARENA) with a 10-year prison sentence.

Faced with the corruption of his predecessors, Bukele relies on his reputation as a good manager even during the pandemic, during which he distributed $ 300 to the most vulnerable. Still in the fight against violence, an achievement he was already anticipating in the capital. The deployment of the army and the strong hand against the dreaded gangs have dramatically improved the homicide numbers, although since then Lighthouse He was honored for making deals with the leaders of famous gangs.

“Bukele dominates social networks by positioning a message that contributes to his epic, but as we can see, he is a skillful politician who knows what to hide,” says María José Puerta, professor of the US government in Florida.

The firmness maintained by Washington In the last hours, a setback in Bukele’s plans, it does not stop him for the moment. “This is the official position of the United States as a defender and promoter of democracy. On the other hand, there is the domestic question: an additional crisis in El Salvador could complicate the one at the border, so the United States will do everything possible to put pressure on Bukele. The consequences are enormous on both levels, ”reveals Puerta.