SAN SALVADOR (AFP) – El Salvador went to the polls yesterday with victory for gang-busting President Nayib Bukele in the bag and the only question how many seats his party will claim in a new-look parliament.
Bukele, 42, enjoys approval ratings hovering around 90 per cent and polls as Latin America’s most popular leader, credited with slashing the country’s homicide rate and restoring peace to a violence-weary nation.
His government has rounded up more than 75,000 gangsters – real and suspected – since a state of emergency came into effect in March 2022.
Thousands are held in a brand-new prison – plugged as the largest in the Americas – which the president had built in a matter of months.
Last year, the country that was once one of the most dangerous in the world saw the murder rate plummet to its lowest level in three decades – far below the world average.
As a result, Bukele was all but assured victory in the first voting round despite concerns about rights violations, creeping authoritarianism and grumblings about the economy.
“He has been effective. He cleaned up all those places (of gangs) where nobody thought it could be done,” retired architect Claudia Del Velasco, 72, told AFP in the capital San Salvador, “excited” about casting her vote.
“One feels safe now to visit places you haven’t seen for years. Even to discover” new ones, she added, though the economy “can improve”.
El Salvador’s fearsome gangs took some 120,000 civilian lives in three decades, according to the government.
