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Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s authoritarian president, has stepped down to mount a re-election bid that has been widely embraced by voters and worsened critics’ concerns about democratic backsliding in the central American nation.
Bukele is expected to easily win the February presidential election, with one recent poll showing he holds a 90 per cent approval rating after winning over Salvadoreans with a harsh crackdown on gangs.
The first term of the self-styled “CEO of El Salvador” was characterised by weak economic growth and gambits such as making bitcoin legal tender and ordering the military to storm congress to pressure lawmakers over security funding. In the past 18 months Bukele has locked up tens of thousands of citizens without trial, reducing homicides in a country once known for having the highest murder rate.
“Bukele continues to enjoy sky-high, really unprecedented approval ratings,” said Risa Grais-Targow, a director at Eurasia Group. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this election effectively turns El Salvador into a single-party state.”
Bukele stepped down from the role on Friday after El Salvador’s legislature granted the move the previous night. Claudia Rodríguez — a close collaborator who previously worked for the Bukeles’ family business — will assume the presidency in the interim period.
Democracy activists say his bid for re-election in the February election is illegal. El Salvador, like many countries in the region, banned consecutive presidential terms to prevent the emergence of dictatorial regimes.
The country’s top constitutional court in 2021 ruled that consecutive terms were permitted if the sitting president stepped down six months before an election, reinterpreting an earlier ruling. The five judges had been appointed a few months earlier by congress, whose dominance by Bukele’s ruling Nuevas Ideas party is forecast to increase in the February election.
A 42-year-old social media expert, Bukele has earned supporters across Latin America, some of whom admire his tough approach to crime. Rights groups and academics worry that checks and balances in the Central American country of 6mn have been weakened in his first term.
He has empowered the military and now enjoys a rubber-stamp congress that made bitcoin legal tender after just hours of debate in June 2021.
That move made him an icon among cryptocurrency enthusiasts but fell flat at home, where few people now use bitcoin. Bukele’s embrace of the digital currency also soured relations with the IMF and contributed to a sharp fall in the value of the country’s sovereign bonds.
Since then worries about a default have eased and the bonds have rallied, but growth and foreign investment have been lacklustre.
“The lack of investment is a serious constraint,” said former central bank president Carlos Acevedo. “The second term will be much harder if he doesn’t manage to respond to people’s economic expectations.”
After years of hostility to the IMF, Bukele is now openly seeking a new debt deal with the fund in hopes of having one next year.
A change in US government policy towards El Salvador, a major source of migrants, is key to the talks. Washington has appointed a new ambassador, and US assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs Brian Nichols recently visited Bukele.
About 97,000 Salvadoreans crossed the southern US border without visas in the 2022 fiscal year, a number the US government would like Bukele’s help to bring down significantly.
Relations had earlier soured. Jean Manes, who was the US embassy’s top diplomat to El Salvador, left the country in 2021, saying the relationship was on “pause” because Bukele’s government showed little interest in bilateral ties.
“Engagement became maybe a more appealing strategy than the previous policy,” said Eurasia’s Grais-Targow, attributing the changed US approach partly to Bukele’s popularity at home and in the region.
“The potential for him to . . . have influence in other countries’ politics makes him a much more useful ally than enemy.”