Bukele’s Second Term!
San Salvador, June 1 (EFE).-
The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, promised on Saturday in his inauguration speech for a second consecutive term to “heal” the economy after curing the country of the “cancer” of violence, mainly generated by gang groups.
“Now that we have solved the most urgent problem, which was security, we are going to focus on important issues, starting with the economy,” Bukele told hundreds of people, including special guests and supporters, from the balcony of the National Palace in the heart of the Salvadoran capital.
He said that “Salvadoran society is still sick, but it no longer has cancer” and that “it remains sick from other infections that it has always had” because “the country has already been cured of the gangs and now wants to be cured of the precarious economy.”
“For this new treatment to heal the economy, maybe we’ll also have to take some bitter medicine,” he stated and added that the three things needed for this are “the guidance of God, the tireless work of the government, and the people defending every decision made, without hesitation.”
According to various surveys, Bukele will end his first term (2019-2024) with society demanding a solution to economic problems, a concern that has overtaken the issue of security.
Since March 2022, El Salvador has been under a state of exception, which suspends constitutional guarantees to combat gangs, following a spiral of homicides that has led to some 80,000 arrests of suspected gang members.
The president highlighted the decline in violent deaths that began in 2016, after the impoverished Central American country experienced the most violent year in its recent history in 2015, with 103 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.
However, under Bukele’s administration, the country has remained at the bottom of economic growth in Central America and is highly dependent on family remittances, which inject more than 8 billion dollars annually.
Economist José Luis Magaña told EFE that extreme monetary poverty “has doubled,” going from 86,000 households in 2019 to 170,000 in 2023. The balance of these five years indicates a “deterioration in the living conditions of households.”
According to official data, the general poverty rate increased from 22.8% to 27.2% of households.
Moreover, public debt reached 30 billion dollars as of March 2024, of which 10.5 billion dollars was generated by the current government, which has taken more than 1.615 billion dollars from the workers’ pension fund since 2023.
Despite growing by 3.5% in 2023, over these five years, sectors like agriculture and industry have seen declines of 2% and 9%, respectively, according to Magaña.
This second consecutive term for Bukele comes even though the constitution prohibits it; the last president re-elected in this way was the dictator and general Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, who ruled between 1931 and 1944. EFE
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