Big Victory Comes With Big Expectations for El Salvador’s Young New President

Big Victory Comes With Big Expectations for El Salvador’s Young New President
El Salvador’s president-elect, Nayib Bukele, accompanied by his wife, Gabriela, waves to supporters in San Salvador, El Salvador, Feb. 3, 2019 (AP photo by Moises Castillo).

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador—In a landslide earlier this month, voters in El Salvador elected 37-year-old Nayib Bukele as the country’s next president. Bukele, who many observers described as a populist for his direct communication style and reliance on social media to connect with voters, defeated the two most powerful political parties on an anti-corruption platform that attacked the failures of 25 years of post-civil war governance.

Bukele was also cast as a political outsider, although he was most recently mayor of San Salvador and, before that, the city of Nuevo Cuscatlan—and a member of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN. But he was expelled from the FMLN in 2017—for his outspoken criticism of the party and allegedly calling a city councilwoman a witch and throwing an apple at her, a charge he denies—which meant he needed another political party for his presidential candidacy. When his own party, Nuevas Ideas, wasn’t registered in time, he tried to run on a centrist party ticket. When that party was de-listed because of low votes in the previous election, he brokered a deal with the Grand Alliance for National Unity, a party that in 2010 broke away from the main conservative opposition, the Nationalist Republican Alliance, or ARENA. He was accused of political opportunism, of aligning himself with corrupt politicians for political convenience.

Party officials and even some long-time analysts of El Salvador didn’t believe that the polls, which almost universally showed Bukele winning the first round on Feb. 3 by a substantial margin, could be correct. Many were certain of a second round. Others questioned, not unfairly, whether Bukele could convert his social media fans into voters. In the end, Bukele and the voters proved the skeptics wrong.

Keep reading for free!

Get instant access to the rest of this article by submitting your email address below. You'll also get access to three articles of your choice each month and our free newsletter:

Or, Subscribe now to get full access.

Already a subscriber? Log in here .

What you’ll get with an All-Access subscription to World Politics Review:

A WPR subscription is like no other resource — it’s like having a personal curator and expert analyst of global affairs news. Subscribe now, and you’ll get:

  • Immediate and instant access to the full searchable library of tens of thousands of articles.
  • Daily articles with original analysis, written by leading topic experts, delivered to you every weekday.
  • Regular in-depth articles with deep dives into important issues and countries.
  • The Daily Review email, with our take on the day’s most important news, the latest WPR analysis, what’s on our radar, and more.
  • The Weekly Review email, with quick summaries of the week’s most important coverage, and what’s to come.
  • Completely ad-free reading.

And all of this is available to you when you subscribe today.

More World Politics Review