El Salvador President Nayib Bukele and his New Ideas party have won the supermajority the leader needs in Congress to govern as he pleases, electoral officials announced Monday.
The announcement comes after a painstaking vote counting process, which has raised the hackles of electoral watchdogs and the country’s weak opposition, who cite irregularities.
Bukele handily won re-election Feb. 4 with 84.7% of the vote. What had remained up in the air was if Bukele’s New Ideas party would be equally as successful in legislative elections. On Monday, officials announced that New Ideas won 54 seats of the 60 congressional seats. Allied parties won an additional three seats.
Despite not having the final results, the leader had already declared victory in the presidency and in the congress the night of the election, saying “El Salvador has broken all the records of all democracies in the entire history of the world.”
His work in eradicating gang violence was impressive, I get why the few Salvadorians who aren’t behind bars would vote for him. Although I can’t help but wonder about how many people might have gotten unjustly incarcerated because of how much power he’s given to the police.
1.6% of the whole country is in jail, and they’re put through mass trials where no one has a chance to defend themselves.
We will never know exactly but it’s a lot, and your chance of going to jail is far higher than your chance of being killed by a gang ever was.
I’m gonna get downvoted for this but imho El Salvadorans were not living a life with the gangs the country was effectively in a constant state of war and violence. yes some innocents are probably incarcerated but it pales in comparison to the number of dead innocents and the constant state of fear. The measures he took were 200% justified.