Content area
Full Text
Nayib Bukele won a surprising victory in the February 2019 presidential election in El Salvador, a country that has long been struggling with gang violence and a weak economy. The 39-year-old law school dropout and former publicist typically wears jeans, a leather jacket, and a backward baseball cap, and has described politics as a hobby. He comes from a family of Palestinian descent that controls a diverse business empire including advertising, textile, pharmaceutical, beverage, and automobile companies.
Bukele started his political career in 2012 in the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (fmln) and went on to serve as mayor of San Salvador, the capital. Despite his family's longstanding ties to the former guerrilla movement, the party expelled Bukele in 2017 for violations of its internal rules. The following year, he and his circle of relatives and friends created a party called New Ideas, but failed to register it in time for the 2019 election. He ran for the presidency with the support of the Grand Alliance for National Unity (gana), an offshoot of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (arena).
Behind the youthful, modern image that Bukele tries to convey is a social conservative opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion. Although he portrayed himself as an anti-establishment candidate during the campaign, his government has since displayed more continuities than ruptures with deeply ingrained practices and policies.
ARENA AND THE FMLN had taken turns governing El Salvador after the 1980-92 civil war, and both parties were disgraced by corruption scandals. Three former presidents have been charged with illicit self-enrichment: Francisco Flores died while awaiting trial, Antonio Saca was convicted and sentenced to prison, and Mauricio Funes fled to Nicaragua.
Bukele blamed both parties for the country's precarious security situation, lack of economic opportunities, and depleted public finances. Under the campaign slogan "Return what you stole," he promised transparency and an end to corruption. Effective use of social media and the electorate's discontent with the major parties paved the way for Bukele's triumph in the first round of the election with 53 percent of the vote, avoiding a runoff.
Since taking office in June 2019, he has maintained a business-friendly administration while pursuing ill-defined policies, with a centralized governing style that leaves little space for citizens' participation or...