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.
I had to find out how accurate that quote was, since everyone who writes about this guy mentions the coolest dictator thing.
He did write that, in Spanish, on his Twitter bio.
“The coolest dictator of the world globally”
“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”.
So same sentiment as “in the whole wide world” maybe?
At least he knows he’s not the coolest in the universe.
Ppl have no sense of irony anymore.
He was first called dictator, this is his humoristic response. Wake up!
Wake up?
:/
Putin was insanely popular in his country too, same as Kim jong un and bin Salman, they all have 100% approval rate, they most be awesome leaders
Anyone can be insanely popular! Just gotta have an iron grip on the media!
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.
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?
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
Here’s a story on it by a really great journalist https://youtu.be/jQcTYgOuEzA
You can deny it
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.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/jQcTYgOuEzA
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This whole “democracy is colonialism” stuff needs to end lol
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
Bloody Ancient Athenians coming over here and taking our right to be governed by dictatum.
What kind of tatum?
Channing
It’s the first time I heard about that… is that a common nonsensical political trope?
Considering Latin America has had multiple coupes caused by the US I can see why their populace is bit suseptical to that sort of rhetoric.
Multiple coups, stolen elections, entire systems of control and oppression by American corporations (banana republics), etc.
In Cuba they literally went from super racist and clinging to Spain, to multicultural and trying to get independence from Spain, then back to Jim Crow type racism because of US influences.
Latin America also has a rich and beautiful history of democracy and relative cultural unity so it’s still surprising to see all these dictators come to power. Almost every single country (if not every single one) that revolted against Spain from 1808-1825 ended up becoming a democracy. We need to put this thought at the forefront so as to avoid dictatorial strongmen.
It pops up in countries that were historical targets of colonialism. Usually by the dictators who took over when the European power was kicked out.
America had communal systems for like 30 thousand years before the Spanish came, and guess which system they had
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.
Most of them were monarchies that got destroyed by another monarchy.
Most of them, sure. But don’t ignore the Iroquois Confederation or the Tlaxcalan.
Anyone who puts the words “coolest dictator” in a non satire publication needs to be stockaded
We really need journalists on this planet to do their jobs
Like this journalist did by quoting him directly? Does no one even read anymore?
I read it, but you know many simply go by headlines, which are tailored as clickbait, often irresponsibly. So I’m fine with quoting the guy in context, but it’s poor form to let him get away with ‘coolest dictator’ in the context-free part that 80% of people will see.
Yeah, maybe they should run their country more like Mexico!
deleted by creator
if he lives that long
So a dictatorship.
A candidate being so insanely popular the other parties dont stand a chance isnt really the same as a dictatorship.
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.
He wants to be the only gang in Salvador
That would be the same El Salvador that’s had the world’s highest murder rate since I was a kid, would it?
Sounds like the “war on gangs” is just “replace them all with one big gang and put the leader in charge of the country”.
But go back far enough and that’s how a lot of countries became more than a bunch of local warlords fucking up each others shit.
The oposition literally invited the gangs to decide what to do with the country.
It’s documented in video.
Study the case first before giving a strong opinion.
That would be the same El Salvador that’s had the world’s highest murder rate since I was a kid, would it?
Their murder rate is way down thanks to the efforts of the man you are criticizing for having too much power.
Before him, that’s when gangs were running rampant and contributing to the murder rate you recall as a child.
This is why people overwhelmingly support him. It turns out, results speak louder than ideologies.
Retards will not understand this last part, though.
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.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Power doesn’t corrupt. It just reveals the corruption we already have inside of us.
If someone who is not corrupt is given power, then they will wield that power responsibly.
If someone is corrupt, then their power will reflect that corruption because it enables the temptations to which they succumb.
Try thinking for yourself instead of just trying to fit in.
I posit that an uncorruptible person would never allow themselves to become a Dictator.
An uncorruptible individual would possess other traits that would humble them enough to not believe that they are above all others.
A Dictator believes that they themselves have the only right to rule.
tRy tHinkING foR yoUrself iNsTEad of JUst trYInG To fiT iN.
Get rid of the ableist slur please.
My latin American country needs someone like this dude to get rid of both local and foreign crime, which is going to run rampant at some point
Salvador’s millennial president
Are we the badies?
Are millennials destroying democracy?
Dude looks like the darkest timeline’s version of Johnathan from Queer Eye.
He also made Bitcoin legal tender
El Salvador’s El Presidente.
“The opposition will retire and may not be seen for a while.” - Tropico
Quick photoshop job.
