El Salvador and 'the world's coolest dictator'

CM Regular Columnist Opinion

By Gwynne Dyer
August 6, 2023



El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele

“It’s not perfect, but it’s good. We’ve done something really good here,” said El Salvador’s vice-president, Felix Ulloa, defending the government’s no-quarter war against the street gangs that have dominated the Central American republic for decades. President Nayib Bukele agrees, calling himself “the instrument of God”.

Don’t get Bukele wrong, though. He was speaking ironically, mocking the kind of label that foreign media stick on him. However, he is certainly an instrument of public opinion: a January poll by CID Gallup found 92 per cent support by Salvadoreans for the ruthless tactics he has used against the gangs.

They back him because five years ago El Salvador had the world’s highest murder rate, mostly committed by the rival gangs that controlled most urban neighbourhoods and many rural areas. A murder rate of more than fifty people per 100,000 meant that practically everybody knew at least one of the fresh murder victims every year.

Bukele took that problem on, and he has succeeded. El Salvador’s murder rate is down by more than four-fifths to only 7.8 killed annually per 100,000, exactly the same number as the United States – but at the cost of imprisoning one in a hundred of its population (twice as high as the long-term record holder, the United States).

More:
https://cyprus-mail.com/2023/08/06/el-salvador-and-the-worlds-coolest-dictator/