Fears for democracy in El Salvador after president claims to be 'coolest dictator'

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian and agencies

Fears for democracy in El Salvador after president claims to be ‘coolest dictator’

US diplomat raises concerns after Nayib Bukele makes outlandish claim on Twitter and replaces judges to permit future re-election

Staff and agencies in San Salvador
Tue 21 Sep 2021 22.05 BST

The top US diplomat in El Salvador has warned of “a decline in democracy” in the country, whose president, Nayib Bukele, recently changed his Twitter profile to read “the coolest dictator in the world”.

Speaking after the state department put five Salvadoran supreme court justices on a list of “undemocratic and corrupt actors”, the US embassy chargé d’affaires in San Salvador said the action was taken because the justices voted to allow the president’s re-election, “which is clearly not allowed under the constitution”.

“What are we seeing now? It is a decline in democracy, and that is exactly what is happening,” said Jean Manes.

Bukele said the decision to put the Salvadoran justices on the list “has nothing to do with corruption”. He called it “pure politics and the lowest form of interventionism”.

“We are nobody’s back yard,” Bukele wrote in his Twitter account. Over the weekend he changed his Twitter profile to “dictator”, in an apparently ironic reference to protests against him. By Tuesday he had changed it again to “the coolest dictator in the world”.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/21/fears-for-democracy-in-el-salvador-after-president-claims-to-be-coolest-dictator

[Anon-C]

1. Has he renamed it Elon Salvador yet?

[Judi Lynn]

2. Nayib Bukele calls himself the 'world's coolest dictator' - but is he joking?

El Salvador’s president is consolidating power and seems intent on rewriting the country’s constitution

Mat Youkee in San Salvador
@matyoukee
Sun 26 Sep 2021 05.00 EDT

Among the colourful houses of Comunidad Iberia, an impoverished neighbourhood of San Salvador, the dark glass cube of the Urban Centre for Welfare and Opportunities (or Cubo in its Spanish acronym) is an eye-catching piece of urban architecture. Inside local children take art classes, read in the library and play online games. Outside, a mural depicting Armando Bukele, the father of El Salvador’s president, extols Salvadorans to “live with love and responsibility”.

. . .

On Tuesday, speaking for the first time at the UN general assembly, he took a selfie on the podium and told the audience that “a couple of images on Instagram have a greater impact than any speech in this assembly.” Then he updated his ever-changing Twitter bio to “The coolest dictator in the world”. But increasing numbers of Salvadorans suspect a darker truth behind the trolling.

Last week, an estimated 15,000 people took to the streets of the capital to protest against Bukele’s growing authoritarianism, destroying a recently installed bitcoin ATM machine in the process. It was the latest sign that Bukele’s sky-high approval ratings – which regularly exceed 80% – may be starting to slip.

. . .

Few world leaders have navigated the Covid-19 crisis for their own political benefit better than the Salvadoran president. “The pandemic was a blessing for Bukele,” says Carlos López Bernal, a professor of history at the University of El Salvador. “He presented an apocalyptic scenario to which the only solution, supposedly, was to give the president everything he asked for. More money and more power.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/26/naybib-bukele-el-salvador-president-coolest-dictator