CIVICUS speaks about El Salvador’s recent general election with César Artiga, human rights defender and coordinator of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) in El Salvador, the National Driving Team of the Escazú Agreement and the National Coalition for the Right to Live in a Healthy Environment.
What are the consequences of the landslide election victory for President Nayib Bukele?
On 4 February 2024, Salvadoran democracy was buried. This happened with the complicity of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which remained absent and unmoved by repeated violations of electoral law, showing its negligence and submission to President Nayib Bukele, who has proclaimed himself the winner and president re-elect.
This election was our last chance to recover the incipient democracy established with the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in 1992. Bukele took office in June 2019 and since then the country has experienced profound human rights regression. The rule of law has been broken and institutional and constitutional guarantees have been annulled.
This was a unique opportunity to stop Bukele’s authoritarian onslaught and prevent him continuing to accumulate power and perpetuating himself as the country’s highest and only authority, which is what he pursued with his illegal candidacy. Re-election is unconstitutional in El Salvador, but he manipulated institutions and the entire state apparatus to push forward his project of total control and impose a culture of privilege and impunity for himself and his corporate family clan.
Following the vote, we are officially entering a dictatorship. In part this is because, having come to power for the first time through democratic means, Bukele has been re-elected in an unconstitutional manner. And it is also because of the levels of concentration of power that will result from the election, which as well as giving Bukele a resounding mandate at the head of the executive has also given him absolute control of the Legislative Assembly. There is nothing requiring extraordinary majorities that he won’t be able to do in his second term. This is in addition to control of the judiciary, which he has had since May 2021.
These days dictatorships are not like those of the 1970s and 1980s. In many cases, such as this, they are not the result of military coups, but of power grabbing by leaders who are initially democratically elected. Tactics have also changed, becoming much more subtle. The main danger is not that you will be made to disappear, although that might eventually happen, but that you will be threatened, defamed and ultimately neutralised through media attacks and smear campaigns that will erase you from the public space.
Our democracy is dying because of the deterioration of civic space. The electoral ritual loses meaning from the moment that fundamental civic freedoms, meant to enable citizens’ participation in public affairs, are no longer in place. The current government deliberately swept them away.
How free and competitive was the election?
The election process was very flawed, mainly because the TSE did not apply electoral regulations as far as the president was concerned. The government violated electoral regulations with total impunity and without the TSE intervening. It started the campaign much earlier than the law allowed and used state resources to promote the candidacies of Bukele and his allies, while refusing to pay what’s known as the ‘political debt’, the monetary allocation that the state must make to each political party so that it can promote its candidates. This did not dent the governing party, which had all the state’s resources at its disposal, but it greatly harmed opposition parties, which had to fund themselves and are now on the verge of disappearing.
Moreover, the election took place in the context of a state of emergency that has been in place for two years and has led to the persecution and criminalisation of human rights defenders and dissenting voices. There is widespread fear of sharing one’s opinions or appearing in the media expressing positions critical of the government. This regime of exception that has become permanent did not provide institutional guarantees for a free and fair election.
Election day was marked by irregularities and problems in vote counting and the transmission of preliminary results. Bukele is presumed to have won by a landslide and to have claimed an absolute majority in the Legislative Assembly, but official results are not yet available.
The TSE’s failure to fulfil its role as electoral arbiter and guarantor of the integrity of the process makes one lose confidence in the transparency of the results. No matter how sweeping the results are, the election ends up losing legitimacy in the eyes of national and international public opinion.
What were the main campaign issues?
There was no real debate around issues. The fact that people went to vote without knowing the candidates’ proposals, because parties did not have proposals or lacked the resources or spaces to make them known, is a symptom of major democratic regression.
The ruling party did not present specific proposals, but rather framed re-election as a sort of plebiscite on Bukele, who enjoys great popularity. They simply proposed that people follow Bukele’s leadership and do what he says should be done. A messianic spirit has taken hold of Salvadoran society and the notion has spread that Bukele is the solution to all our problems, and particularly to a truly urgent one that most people are most concerned about – insecurity.
The opposition was divided and its efforts were very dispersed. In addition to not having the necessary funds to publicise their proposals, opposition parties didn’t really have proposals that attracted the public, in comparison to Bukele’s campaign of fear, which announced that, if they won, opposition parties would free thousands of gang members who would once again fill the streets with violence.
The only issue that was talked about was security, because that’s where the government’s made its main impact. Bukele’s popularity is based on the results of his national security strategy against gang violence. However, as part of his ‘war on gangs’ there have been massive arbitrary arrests. Thousands of people have been unjustly detained and experienced violations of due process, the presumption of innocence and the right to defence. This issue was not given enough attention during the campaign, due to disinformation promoted by the government, which claims that all people in detention are gang members or collaborators.
How has public opinion reacted to the government’s security policy?
A broad segment of the public has viewed Bukele’s security strategy favourably because, from their point of view, it has produced results like no other in the past.
Bukele has indeed dismantled gangs, but at what cost? Those who disagree with his methods and think that the emergency regime should be lifted generally don’t say so for fear of reprisals. There is a very strong state-driven media campaign pushing the notion that anyone not supporting the government is a gang collaborator. There is no room for dissent or critical support. Either you support the government 100 per cent, or you are on the gangs’ side.
Some have realised that the government’s security strategy doesn’t offer a lasting solution. The terms of negotiations and agreements reached between the government and the gangs are not known, but it is a fact that the government made a pact with gang leaders.
Bukele’s security policy has resulted in the stigmatisation of working people, simply because of the conditions of exclusion in which impoverished communities live. Mass and indiscriminate arrests have disproportionately affected peasants, farmers, people of Indigenous descent and women human rights defenders. They have all been accused of belonging to illegal associations or collaborating with gangs when all they do is work, educate and contribute to the future of their communities.
What do you think the regional implications will be?
The ‘Bukele effect’ is already being felt at the regional level. The election of Javier Milei in Argentina is not an isolated case. Nor are the measures Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa is taking in response to drug violence in his country. The trend observed in El Salvador is spreading: more and more societies are willing to give up rights and freedoms in exchange for security.
It is unfortunate to see this trend replicated in other countries. People are tired of the lack of response from their governments. Successive democratic governments have failed to promote the effective measures that were needed, and disappointment is enabling alternatives led by conservative, neoliberal and anti-rights governments – which in the long run will bring more problems than real and lasting solutions.
Civic space in El Salvador is rated ‘obstructed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.
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