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El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele
Strongman with a strong mandate? El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele
Since riding an anti-establishment wave to power in 2019, El Salvador’s young, social-media savvy, mano dura (“firm hand”) President Nayib Bukele has tested the limits of his country’s fragile institutions.
He’s sent armed men into congress to pressure lawmakers, harried the opposition with arrests, packed the courts with loyalists, and raised human rights concerns with his jail-first-ask-questions-later approach towards gang violence.
But he’s also done something remarkable: he’s become one of the most popular democratically elected leaders in the world. After three years in office, his approval rating hovers around 90%.
Last week, high on that popularity, Bukele announced he would seek another five-year presidential term in 2024. The constitution seemed to say he couldn’t, but a court ruling last year by his own judicial appointees paved the way for the move.
Democracy and human rights activists aren’t surprised by the reelection bid. “There’s no news in the fact that he’s running again,” says Juan Pappier, an El Salvador specialist at Human Rights Watch. “He’s been using his popularity to undermine democratic institutions and the rule of law from the start.”
So, why is he so popular? One reason is that Bukele – a political upstart who favors a baseball cap and leather jacket over a suit and tie – represents a stark break from the country’s traditional politics. After a brutal civil war ended in the early 1990s, the warring sides became the two main political parties. As they deadlocked the country’s politics, the economy sputtered and violence soared.
“There was a demand for a third option, something different,” says Risa Grais-Targow, a Latin America specialist at Eurasia Group. “Bukele captured that and capitalized on it.”
Once in power, he quickly dealt well with the pandemic, securing vaccine supplies and setting up vaccination centers much faster than neighboring countries in Central America. But crucially, he also managed to bring down the country’s gang-driven murder rate – one of the world’s highest – by a staggering 67%.
Early on, his crime fight was helped by pandemic lockdowns, and there were whispers that he might even have made a shadowy truce with the country’s powerful gangs. But more recently, he’s used drastic emergency powers that give the police broad leeway to arrest people, particularly in poorer areas where gangs thrive.
There’s a downside. Many, actually. Activists say the gang crackdown has led to thousands of arbitrary detentions in what Amnesty International calls a “human rights crisis.” And they worry about broader moves to bring the country’s institutions under presidential control.
“To deal sustainably with gang violence,” says Pappier of HRW, “you actually need strong judicial institutions that are willing and able to investigate the gangs and to hold those responsible for the horrible abuses that these gangs commit. But that is exactly the opposite of what Bukele has done.”
What’s more, the US and EU have already raised concerns about Bukele playing fast and loose with the rule of law. And with immigration a perennial hot-button issue in US politics, the Biden administration in particular has pressured governments across Central America over corruption and impunity, part of a strategy to address the “root causes” of northward migration.
Pressure from big players matters to small El Salvador. After all, it’s a tiny, resource-poor, dollarized economy with a massive debt burden. The country relies heavily on external financing, and remittances alone account for about a quarter of GDP. Bukele’s splashy bid to become a crypto economy has largely flopped so far, and with little to offer in the way of infrastructure or resources, it can’t really play the China card the way other Latin American countries do.
That may limit how far Bukele’s authoritarian instincts can go. “If El Salvador becomes a pariah,” asks Grais-Targow, “what do they have to keep them going and to keep the population happy?”
But analysts say Bukele is also betting the US won’t push him too hard. For one thing, they say, he seems confident that Donald Trump – or another Republican in his image – will take the White House in 2024, heralding the return of a more transactional approach to foreign policy.
For another, the sensitivity of immigration in American politics may limit how much pressure any administration would put on El Salvador.
“The Bukele administration assumes, probably correctly, that the US would never dream of imposing major economic sanctions on them,” says Grais-Targow. “That would drive more Salvadorans north, which would be a huge domestic political problem for whoever is in the White House.”
The pathway from here is ominous for El Salvador, says Pappier. “We have seen this situation of highly popular leaders destroying the rule of law and evading constitutional limits many times in Latin America — we saw it with Chavez in Venezuela, with Evo Morales in Bolivia – this is the same story. And in the case of Venezuela and others, we have seen where it ended.”
But with strong domestic support, little opposition, and nearly complete control over institutions, the savvy Bukele is in a commanding position to write that story however he likes. For now, the next chapter seems certain to begin in 2024.
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El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele present the plan of "Bitcoin City."
What We’re Watching: Bukele’s crypto bomb, Somalia needs a president
Has El Salavdor’s crypto experiment bombed?
Mass protests erupted last fall after Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s youthful, tech-savvy president with an authoritarian streak, announced that the country would begin accepting Bitcoin as legal tender. Many Salvadorans said Bukele’s embrace of the volatile currency would spur inflation and financial instability. Those warnings have proven prescient. In recent days, the crypto world has been caught in a tailspin, in part because global inflation has lowered investors’ tolerance for risk. Bitcoin and Etherium, the biggest cryptocurrencies, have both declined in value by 20-25% this week – and El Salvador is recording losses of about 37% based on what it forked out for crypto in a series of purchases. This has proven to be a disaster for Bukele: two major credit rating agencies predict El Salavdor will default on its loans. San Salvador has an IMF repayment due in January worth a whopping $800 million, and amid ongoing negotiations earlier this year the international lender warned that “Bitcoin should not be used as an official currency with legal tender status.” Still, the enigmatic Bukele continues to double down: this week, he released plans for the Bitcoin city he touted last fall – a smart city based on the use of the flailing currency.
Somalia's long-overdue presidential election
Fifteen months behind schedule and facing a May 17 deadline to avoid getting cut off from foreign aid, Somalia will finally hold its presidential election on Sunday. There are lots of familiar faces among the 39 candidates, including two former presidents, a former prime minister, and current President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmaajo, a former US civil servant. When his term expired in February 2021, Farmaajo convinced the lower house of parliament to unilaterally extend it by two years, and then later backtracked following an outcry from the upper house and donors. He faces a tough challenge, especially from supporters of PM Mohamed Hussein Roble, who for months has been locked in a power struggle with Farmaajo over control of the government. (Roble is not running, but his supporters will follow his lead in parliamentary voting.) Further complicating matters, the vote is a quasi-democratic "indirect" election by all 329 members of parliament in which a candidate needs a two-thirds majority to avoid a runoff. The winner, if we ever get one, will face myriad problems, with security issues topping the list. Just this week, the militant group al-Shabab attacked a site near Mogadishu’s airport, where lawmakers will cast their ballots in a hangar surrounded by armed troops.
Peng Shuai, China's tennis star, appears safe but questions remain
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week with a look at Peng Shuai's public appearance, El Salvador's "Bitcoin City," and Americans' Thanksgiving celebrations.
Why has China silenced its famous tennis player, Peng Shuai?
Well, they haven't completely silenced her in the sense that the head of the IOC, the International Olympic Committee with Beijing Olympics coming up, basically told the Chinese government, "hey, what is the absolute minimum that you can do so that we can get Beijing Olympics back on track?" And they did the absolute minimum, which was a half an hour phone call with her that felt like kind of a hostage phone call. But nonetheless, she says that she is fine and is private and doesn't want to talk about the fact that she had accused the former Vice Premier of sexually assaulting her. That is a fairly heady charge. It was clear, going to get a lot of headlines in the run-up to the Olympics. And she wasn't heard from after that. So big problem for the Chinese in the run-up to the Olympics.
What's the deal with the planned "Bitcoin City" in El Salvador?
Where they announced they're going to have this city, that's going to be financed by Bitcoin and it's going to be powered by a volcano and that's how they're going to do the mining in El Salvador. The first country in the world that is moving towards Bitcoin as currency, because they want to get away from their peg to the dollar. And because they're having a problem with the ability to get any more money from the IMF. It's hugely popular. This President, Bukele who has about 90% approval, young guy, kind of a tech bro, calls himself CEO of El Salvador, as opposed to President, whatever. This is really just a bet on Bitcoin. He is literally betting the future of the country on the notion that Bitcoin is going to go to the moon. And we all know that's not true, that's Dogecoin, right? But anyway, I wouldn't be playing casino with my national bank reserves, but I'm not CEO of El Salvador. So let's see how that works out for him.
It's Thanksgiving week in the US this week. This year, what should Americans be thankful for?
How about those of us that ordered turkey early? Huh? Yeah. Be thankful about that. Because we got those turkeys. When the people that didn't get their act together, they're going to get stupid scrawny turkey. You're going to get pork. You're going to get lamb. It's going to be horrible. But hey, we're with family, with friends, we're getting through COVID and I'm glad we're all here.
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