Nayib Bukele claims landslide victory and says Spanish democracy is a colonial fraud in impassioned speech to supporters
Nayib Bukele claims landslide victory and says Spanish democracy is a colonial fraud in impassioned speech to supporters
Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s millennial president, attacked Spanish colonialism and imperialism in a fiery victory speech after he won a landslide victory.
Amid claims he is turning the country into a dictatorship, he boasted to flag-waving crowds below the presidential palace that El Salvador would be the first country with “a one-party system in a democracy”.
“The entire opposition together was pulverised,” Mr Bukele, who once styled himself the “world’s coolest dictator”, told the cheering masses.
The baseball cap-wearing Mr Bukele, 42, has become vastly popular for his war on gangs, but he has also been accused of stifling the courts and silencing opposition.
In his speech he said a Spanish journalist had recently asked him why he wants to dismantle democracy.
"Del mundo mundial" on Spanish is a common phrase (mostly used by children) to say "of the world". If you want to translate literally, it would be more like "of the worldly world".
Especially since a decent portion of the US democracy was lifted straight out of the Six Nations. They straight up copied the Native Americans in the New England area of the country. Which is why when you look at the Greek version of Democracy, and the US version, there's a ton of differences
Am sorry but my native American imperialistic ancestors liked annexing and conquering those beneath them and make their own empire that got annexed by the Spanish. Big fish ate small fishies before it got nommed by a shark.
I fully expect to get downvoted for this but as much as im anti-dictator (like any normal person) you cannot deny he has objectively been a good thing for the country so far. He has decimated the gangs which has caused a 70% decrease in the homicide rate, going from the highest in the world to the lowest in Latin America. And him being talked as a "dictator" isnt really accurate either. He was elected Mayor of the capital at fist, was extremely popular so ran for president and won, democratically, in a landslide. And his policies, specifically with that gangs has kept him at a mind-boggling 90% approval rating, making him the most popular leader of any country, and he is running for re-election fairly and democratically, because why would he even need to rig the results when hes so insanely popular?
Yes there is Plenty you can criticise him for (being anti-aborition and anti-gay marriage for example) but in that regard he is no worse than any previous leader of the country.
He's not a dictator yet, but he'll have the opportunity to rewrite the constitution with the numbers his party will get in the next election. He seems to have signalled this is what he plans to do. Given his economic policies and the fact that he runs a police state (even if it was temporarily needed to get rid of gangs I doubt it will stop), he looks a lot like Pinochet which gives some people pause.
That said it's up to the people of El Salvador to decide if it's worth the risk to hand one party all the power.
Bunch of people in this comment thread have no idea what they are talking about. I have family in various parts of el Salvador and ever since bukele came into office politics is all they fucking talk about. It's actually quite annoying but the people there absolutely love him and his party. Maybe I am biased as I also have family that hold positions in nuevas ideas. Either way I don't think I've ever heard of a Salvadorean that didn't love the direction the country is going.
You can deny it. He has been arresting thousands of people with zero evidence they are involved in gangs. Police have quotas on how many “gang members” they have to arrest to make him look good so they arrest random people to fulfill the quotas.
He’s a fascist and the fact he gets so much support because he’s “arresting the criminals” with so little pushback is scary
No, you really cant. You can do what you're doing which is criticising the method and thats very fair, but the results are undeniable.
Police have quotas on how many “gang members” they have to arrest to make him look good so they arrest random people to fulfill the quotas.
Thats an unsubstantiated claim and the couple of reports thats based off claims its orders from specific regional police chiefs, not the government, you can argue his government should do a better job monitoring those things, but you cant pin that on him personally.
He has been arresting thousands of people with zero evidence they are involved in gangs.
This claim has more evidence but independent organisation (HRW and Cristosal) only had 200 complaints in the first couple months after 25,000 arrests (its difficult to find more recent figures). So even if we assume all those complaints are valid and those people were wrongfully arrested then thats <1% of arrests being innocent, which is pretty good honestly.
he gets so much support because he’s “arresting the criminals” with so little pushback is scary
Because you dont have the context. Its easy to think of it as scary when you live in a relatively peaceful developed country, but for the people actually from El Salvador that had to deal with extremely violent gangs that could murder you for basically any reason at any time with no consequence and a government that was making deals with those gangs to keep the citizens organised, its an incredible relief, and yes he is actually arresting criminals and massively reducing the homicide rate. The fact that any time he is brought up, even on that Youtube video you linked Salvadorian people come out universally in support of him and point out how your "journalist" can only go around the country making her documentary without being murdered is because his policies, just goes to show how much good his policies are doing.
and again, dont get me wrong, im opposed to a lot of right wing populist policies and im against undemocratic dictators (which I think he is only on the borderline of) but human lives are more important to me than political principles.
We do need to eliminate the Republican party but that's far from the only problem with US politics. Honestly, moving away from a first past the post voting system would force both Democrats and Republicans to do better, or get replaced by parties that better represent their constituency.
You can have good dictators, even if they are rare.
If you can't comprehend this, then you are a victim of propaganda and indoctrination.
Sometimes, it's easier to convince the masses to vote against themselves than it is to convince a dictator to sell them out.
For example, Mexico vs. El Salvador.
15 years ago, nobody thought Mexico would have a worse gang problem than El Salvador. Without Bukele's heavy-handed approach to suppressing gangs, they would still be running rampant like they are in Mexico.
You can have good dictators, even if they are rare.
Hard disagree there.
But it really depends on what you value as good and bad.
For instance, if you think that people have an inherent right to have a say in how they are governed, then a dictatorship can never be good because it infringes on that right in the most serious of ways.
If you think a stable and sustainable system of government that will last beyond the life of a few leaders is important, then dictatorship is not a good system, because one good dictator creates no guarantee that the next dictator will be good, and establishing a system of dictatorship affords a bad dictator that much more power to ruin lives.
One good dictator is one thing but what happens after him? What are the chances he'll be succeeded by another supposedly benevolent dictator? It also increases the chances someone gets tired of the dictator and coups him which may turn into yet another bloody civil war.
Democracy sucks but it's the best system we have,
One can argue for his emergency decisions to handle the gangs but democracy should be restored once the dust settles.
Europe tried it. Ended up with guillotines and the Great War. After that they tried it again but without the royalty branding and we got World War Two.
But thanks to your comment now I see that my history books indoctrinated me. My belief that the enlightened despot of Germany that pulled their economy out of the Great Depression, built up a modern infrastructure, and was a champion of animal rights was a bad guy is clearly just propaganda influencing me. I should get redpilled and cheer for people's power over their own government being taken away.
God Lemmy has the biggest whack jobs on the Internet.
You said that they are rare, so what do you do if the ruler is bad and has the power to ruin the country for decades and can pass the rule to his song who may be bad too?
Have you ever considered that kind of dichotomy actually helps him rather than hurts him?
Imagine being a Bukele supporter and seeing people like you say he's bad just because has too much power.
To El Salvador's population, Bukele is responsible for stopping gangs from freely using rape and murder as means of extortion. They don't care about your stupid western ideological wars. To them, results are more important.
Compare El Salvador's gang problem to Mexico's, and perhaps you can see why dictatorships are not intrinsically bad just like democracies are not intrinsically good.
I don't expect you to have that level of rationality, though.
And why does a guy with this much support feel compelled to do away with democracy in the first place? This dude is already neck-deep in some shit and is already working to undermine the eventual backlash.
I'm tunisian and i know dictators excuses very well to stay in power. Lot of people was kidnapoed, tortured and killed by Ben Ali. Ben Ali excuse was about protecting people from Islamist extremist.
Idk I immediately side with South American leaders that the US seems to think are evil 🤷 seen the pattern too much. Anything he's doing that's bad or is he just a leftist not giving the capitalist class what they want?
ITT: People who don't know what the fuck they're talking about. If you're not Salvadorean, or have no understanding of how politics in El Salvador have been for the past half-century, kindly shut up.
I got to meet him at a wedding about a year ago. He's like a regular guy he just cares about the people. I don't think the one party thing is on purpose.