International Community Places No Hurdles to Reelection for Bukele

Roman Gressier and José Luis Sanz
A projector churned out five minutes of ghoulish footage: common graves, bloodied child cadavers, people crying, and gang members hacking at victims with machetes. It was the evening of last Saturday, September 9, and some 500 people, including families with small children, had gathered at Victory Christian Ministries in Woodbridge, Virginia, for a meeting with Salvadoran Legislative Assembly President Ernesto Castro.

“This was everyday life in El Salvador,” Castro told the congregants. Yells of “death penalty,” “put them away for good,” and “reelection” inundated the room. A line of 16 other legislators from the ruling party Nuevas Ideas had filed onto the auditorium stage, but Castro alone addressed the crowd in a nearly three-hour monologue.

He shouted epithets against the oligarchy, traditional parties, and “corrupt judges” —”we cleaned out the Constitutional Chamber, the Attorney General’s Office, and the Judicial System,” he said— and underscored the reduction of gang presence and state of exception as the chief achievements after the Bukele administration’s four-year mark.

“We [legislators] come and go, but our President Nayib Bukele needs your support,” he said, asking attendees to vote for any Nuevas Ideas legislative candidate they choose, in order to provide Bukele “governability”.

The electoral campaign has not legally begun in El Salvador, but tomorrow, Central American Independence Day, marks one year since Bukele announced his unconstitutional bid for reelection, drawing scant local and international resistance despite signs that he will seek to perpetuate himself in power.

. . .

Roman Gressier and José Luis Sanz
A projector churned out five minutes of ghoulish footage: common graves, bloodied child cadavers, people crying, and gang members hacking at victims with machetes. It was the evening of last Saturday, September 9, and some 500 people, including families with small children, had gathered at Victory Christian Ministries in Woodbridge, Virginia, for a meeting with Salvadoran Legislative Assembly President Ernesto Castro.

“This was everyday life in El Salvador,” Castro told the congregants. Yells of “death penalty,” “put them away for good,” and “reelection” inundated the room. A line of 16 other legislators from the ruling party Nuevas Ideas had filed onto the auditorium stage, but Castro alone addressed the crowd in a nearly three-hour monologue.

He shouted epithets against the oligarchy, traditional parties, and “corrupt judges” —”we cleaned out the Constitutional Chamber, the Attorney General’s Office, and the Judicial System,” he said— and underscored the reduction of gang presence and state of exception as the chief achievements after the Bukele administration’s four-year mark.

“We [legislators] come and go, but our President Nayib Bukele needs your support,” he said, asking attendees to vote for any Nuevas Ideas legislative candidate they choose, in order to provide Bukele “governability”.

The electoral campaign has not legally begun in El Salvador, but tomorrow, Central American Independence Day, marks one year since Bukele announced his unconstitutional bid for reelection, drawing scant local and international resistance despite signs that he will seek to perpetuate himself in power.

More:
https://elfaro.net/en/202309/el_salvador/27061/international-community-places-no-hurdles-to-reelection-for-bukele