El Salvador measures the overwhelming popularity of President Nayib Bukele at the polls, as he aspires to re-election

Salvadorans are already voting in elections They are expected to give re-election and greater powers to President Nayib Bukeleapplauded for putting ruthless gangs behind bars with a relentless “war” that suspended civil liberties.

Bukele, a 42-year-old former publicist, is all but guaranteed a second five-year term, with an overwhelming popularity of 90% and without any heavy opponents, and could even annihilate the opposition in the new 60-seat Congress, which he already comfortably controls.

In a vote that will take place under a state of emergency for the first time since the end of the civil war in 1992, some 6.2 million Salvadorans, including 740,000 abroad, are called to vote in a ten-hour day. which will close at 8pm in Argentina.

Relieved by the tranquility that has come to their neighborhoods previously occupied by the violent Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs, Salvadorans applaud Bukele’s “iron fist” policyeven at the cost of granting some freedoms.

“Security has improved, before not everyone could be here. I hope this continues and that the economic situation improves,” Santos de Martínez, a 66-year-old housewife, told AFP after voting in La Campanera (north- east of the capital San Salvador). , once a bastion of Barrio 18.

After a bloody weekend with 87 deaths, Bukele imposed a state of emergency in March 2022 for a total of nearly 76,000 inmates and reduced homicides to historic lows (officially 2.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023) in what was previously the country with the highest rate of criminal violence in the world.

But organizations like Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) They denounce arbitrary arrests, torture and deaths in prison. About 7,000 innocent people were freed, but many imprisoned people were unable to communicate with their families.

His power is immense. Bukele, of Palestinian origin and who mocks his detractors who call him a “dictator”, In addition to Parliament, it controls justice, the Prosecutor’s Office and the rest of the state apparatus.

The magistrates renewed by that Congress interpreted the Constitution in his favor and, despite the ban on re-election, allowed him to run for a new mandate, something to which analysts and opponents They assure that his candidacy is unconstitutional.

Today the opposition is in pieces. Its five candidates barely appear in the polls, including those from the left-wing Farabundo Martí Front (FMLN), Manuel Flores, and the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), Joel Sánchez.

“With another five years he will have enough time to consolidate a hegemonic party dynamic,” commented political scientist Álvaro Artiga, of the Central American University (UCA).

Very confident in his re-election, the most popular president in Latin America, according to a regional poll, He didn’t even ask to vote for him.

Fearing a return of the gangs, he asked to vote for his Nuevas Ideas party and not to lose even one of the 56 seats it has in the outgoing legislature of 84 deputies, so as not to jeopardize the war against the gangs.

This millennial regular on social networkswho wears jeans and a sweater, a trimmed beard and gelled hair, came to power in 2019 with 53% of the votes promising change to a population fed up with the Arena-FMLN two-party system which did not solve the problems of insecurity and poverty.

“After security, we are now concerned about the high cost of living, which is the big challenge,” former Central Bank president Carlos Acevedo told AFP.

29% of the 6.5 million Salvadorans living in the country are poor, according to CEPAL, and many continue to emigrate to the United States in search of work. Around 3 million live abroad and send remittances worth $8 billion a year, vital to the local population.

“Aside from safety, I would like them to increase the educational aspect. It is very important, especially for young people who expect better opportunities,” said Isabel Argueta, 20, at the Avenida Olímpica polling station, where Bukele will vote.

Despite everything and his popularity, the president has failed to convince Salvadorans to use the bitcoin he imposed in 2021 as legal tender in adollarized economy, according to him, to revive it.

With between five and seven million followers on the X networks, Tiktok, Instagram and Facebook, Bukele, married to psychologist Gabriela Rodríguez and father of two little girls, also promotes megaprojects and tourism in the “safest country in Latin America”.