“Sábados de bullying”, Latin America’s most popular president’s aggressive method of appeasing critical voices

“It’s Saturday night, so what?”why not intimidate a couple of “uncomfortable” paid with the checkbook of a fraudster who wanted to be president but didn’t even win the primaries? », Wrote the President of El Salvador on the night of April 24. The “uncomfortable” are the journalists and with this appeal began a fierce attack. Is Twitter today some kind of weapon of mass destruction, and Nayib Bukele is pushing the red button more and more often.

The Salvadoran has become a case study in Latin America. He is by far the most popular president in his country and one of the most supported in the world. In all polls, even the most critical, it exceeds 80% positive image. As regional leaders see their support disintegrated by the dramatic figures of the coronavirus pandemic (Latin America accounts for 35% of deaths worldwide) and economic devastation shakes the continent’s fragile economies, Bukele is going strong with its obligations $ 300, his food packages and a sharp drop in the murder rate in one of the world’s most violent countries.

He capitalized on the fatigue of a business and managed to maintain the support over time. “He is the most popular populist president in the world,” said Carlos Dada, one of the founders of Lighthouse, the prestigious investigative medium that has become one of the president’s favorite targets, in his speech at the Ibero-American Colloquium on Digital Journalism.

And as the world spreads a strong current of denouncing harassment on social media, the so-called “cool and twittering first president” is also the first to claim virtual harassment to execute detractors … After every message from Bukele , it is activated the machinery. His followers jostle and he retweets. “There is a circuit of trolls that works when a journalist or information that he does not like becomes a trend,” denounces journalist Sergio Arauz in dialogue with Infobae, and explains that it is almost automatic how he calls bukelismo spokespersons, “their fighting dogs,” on social networks.

Neither Bukele nor his ministers speak to the media that do not consider. In general, the president does not give interviews, many journalists are blocked on their social networks and there is an explicit order not to dialogue even in off the record with them. “We know people who just because they suspect they are talking to us have to take a polygraph test, go through lie detectors, find out if they have a relationship with journalists … It’s science- fiction “, reveals Arauz.

Dada assures that Bukele has divided the country between those who are with him and his enemies, intensifying the persecution of journalists and promoting new media platforms dedicated to the rehearsal of his speech. “His platforms are used for the public lynching he himself conducts on his Twitter account, his “Bullying Saturdays” are a clear example of this, “he said. According to him, what is happening in the country is a populism devoid of ideology and closer to the practice of power by all means. “It requires the dismantling of democratic institutions and the elimination of critical voices, and this is where we journalists come in,” he warned.

Laura Andrade, director of the Institute of Public Opinion at the University of Central America José Simeón Cañas in El Salvador, explains that any critical voice is the victim of this smear campaign, and warns that in some cases they result in “political assassination”. “Our concern is linked to the citizen reaction of the most fanatical sector which supports the president. It is a snowball that grows more and more because it nourishes it and transmits to the population the message that these journalists are enemies and therefore targets in this very confused socio-political environment ”.

As Andrade reveals to Infobae, There is a group installed at the Presidential House to monitor all government posts that are made on social media: “Once the questions are separated, they identify a key message with which they intend to confuse the attention that Salvadoran society gives to these problems and when journalists want to address these points in press conferences, there is a direct affront, a questioning in which Ultimately, not only does the president not resolve the doubt raised, but he also cross-examines journalists on who funds them or what relationships they have with international organizations.

“Bukele confuses journalists with his opponent, he has already defeated all his opponents at the polls, the media are what he has left,” Arauz explains. “He is not used to an uncomfortable press, he confuses the work of public relations officer with that of the press,” he adds to explain his relationship with journalists but also his personalist way of exercising power.

The journalist of Lighthouse puts the situation in context, he says that for the past 30 years, El Salvador has been ruled by the Cold War parties, Arena and the FMNL. “The power of Arena stigmatized us as communists, subversives, leftists… In 2009, when Mauricio Funes came to power – which adopted all the vices and is today asylum in Nicaragua – and we remained with the same critical attitude and control of power, They began to designate us as the sold, the right-handed, the fachas ”. But Bukele, who campaigned very effectively by claiming he was above ideologies and retweeting corruption investigations, also did not tolerate in-depth journalistic coverage. “Sure, he’s not used to disagreeing with him.”

“There is no openness to dialogue, it seeks to impose an unequivocal official vision, with which we should all agree because, supposedly, this is what the population wants”, criticizes Andrade .

In its February 4 resolution, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights took precautionary measures for the protection of 34 journalists. And, according to the Association of Journalists of El Salvador (APES), so far in 2021, violations of journalism have increased by more than 100%, compared to the same period in 2020. Between January and April this year, the APES Center for Attacks on Journalists verified 113 attacks against journalists, up from 54 last year. “You can clearly see how Nayib Bukele’s government is using state institutions to persecute these media which are, in its own words, uncomfortable,” APES president Angélica Cárcamo told Efe.

Reporters Without Borders also identified serious problems of access to information and harassment of journalists.. In his latest press freedom ranking published last April, he pointed out that El Salvador is ranked 82nd out of the 180 countries that make up the list: it is down eight places compared to last year. “This is one of the biggest drops in the ranking,” warned RSF in its report.

Bukele knows the power of social media, he knows they are very fertile ground for bullying, and he uses them to shield them from their shocking popularity ratings. He’s a smart twitterer, the point is, he’s also the president …

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