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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.
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.
Edit: current election not next election
Imagine the opposition was inviting gang leaders to decide what to do with the country.
That’s what happened and it’s documented in video.
Why would anybody vote for them?