Politics In El Salvador

El Salvador is a Spanish speaking country in Central America. Poverty and crime are rife. But El Presidente, Nayib Bukele  decided to go hard on criminals, building a super prison, a Terrorism Confinement Center with room for 40,000 inmates. It is fair to say that he has got the murder rate down from one of the world's highest to something much lower. See the Wiki's List of countries by intentional homicide rate for more and better details. El Salvador achieved 37.2 kills for every 100,000 people.

Jamaica is, like Trinidad and Tobago at 44.7 & 38.6 with even higher scores. The U.S. Virgin Islands are the top rated with 49.3. The  United States has a modest 6.4 while England and Wales achieve a paltry 1.2

The Mail has followed up Presidente Bukele's publicity stunt with a look at South American prisons. See Inside the most violent jails in South America were gangs decapitate rivals and eat victim's hearts. It sounds rather challenging.

Murder Stops In El Salvador After President Puts Criminals In Real Prison  [ 22 May 2023 ]
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El Salvador has accumulated 365 murder-free days since President Nayib Bukele took office in 2019, the Salvadoran leader announced on Thursday, having enjoyed just a single day without a registered homicide in the 15 years prior.

The precipitous drop in the homicide rate in one of the world’s most crime-ridden countries has been impressive and has been particularly prominent in the first five months of this year.

There have been 97 murder-free days so far this year up until May 13, up significantly from the 27 days recorded for the same period in 2022, and the three days in 2021. It is important to note that the government is not claiming the days were consecutive, but it still represents an unprecedented feat for a country that many experts said had the highest murder rate in the world before Bukele took power.

The significant decrease in the murder rate has been widely attributed to Bukele’s controversial crackdown on organized crime. The Salvadoran leader declared war on gangs in March 2022 after a spate of 87 gang-related murders in the space of just three days.

Bukele asked Congress to approve a temporary, month-long state of emergency to tackle the violence epidemic. The move suspended a number of constitutional rights and allowed police to make arrests without warrants, detain suspects without the right to legal representation, and enabled the state to access private communications.
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He tried; he succeeded. Good for him.

 

El Salvador Has 365 Murder-Free Days After El Presidente Put Criminals In Prison  [ 22 May 2023 ]
QUOTE
El Salvador has accumulated 365 murder-free days since President Nayib Bukele took office in 2019, the Salvadoran leader announced on Thursday, having enjoyed just a single day without a registered homicide in the 15 years prior.

The precipitous drop in the homicide rate in one of the world’s most crime-ridden countries has been impressive and has been particularly prominent in the first five months of this year.

There have been 97 murder-free days [ out of 133 ] so far this year up until May 13, up significantly from the 27 days recorded for the same period in 2022, and the three days in 2021. It is important to note that the government is not claiming the days were consecutive, but it still represents an unprecedented feat for a country that many experts said had the highest murder rate in the world before Bukele took power.....................

However, while the left-liberal press has decried the tactics, Bukele has a sky-high 91 percent approval rate with El Salvadorians. In many ways, the country was facing civil-war-like conditions, and during war, many countries suspend civil rights in order to address severe internal conflict and civil strife, including the American Civil War............
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Various fools, rogues and chancers are whining about El Presidente but real people approve big time. Nayib Bukele got a grip, building a super prison, his Terrorism Confinement Center. With an approval rating of 91 percent among voters he must be getting something right. It is better than any American President ever had.

 

Nayib Bukele ex Wiki
Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez born 24 July 1981) is a Salvadoran politician and businessman who is the 43rd president of El Salvador, serving since 1 June 2019. He is the first president since José Napoleón Duarte (1984–1989) not to have been elected as the candidate of one of the country's two major political parties: the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA).

Bukele served as mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán for three years from 2012 to 2015, and then served three years as mayor of San Salvador,, the nation's capital, from 2015 to 2018. After winning both mayoral elections as a member of the FMLN, in 2017 Bukele was expelled from the party. In 2018 he established his own political party: Nuevas Ideas (NI). He sought to run for president in the 2019 election with the center-left Democratic Change (CD); however, the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) dissolved the CD, forcing Bukele to instead run with the center-right Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA). He won the election with 53 percent of the vote.

El Salvador's murder rate decreased to historic lows during Bukele's tenure, falling by over 50 percent during his first year in office. Although Bukele attributed the decrease in murders to his deployment of thousands of police and soldiers to gang strongholds and an increase in prison security, his government has been accused by the United States of secretly negotiating with MMara Salvatrucha (MS-13) to reduce the number of murders. After nearly 80 people were killed by criminals during a single weekend in March 2022, Bukele's government has since arrested over 68,000 people with alleged gang affiliations, leading to accusations of human rights violations being committed by El Salvador's security forces. However, Bukele's crackdown on gangs was credited as effectively "decimating" them, resulting in a nearly 60 percent decrease in homicides in 2022.^[3][4]

Bukele has maintained high approval ratings among Salvadorans throughout his tenure,^[5][6] but has been accused of governing in an authoritarian manner.^[7][8][9] In February 2020, Bukele was criticized by the opposition for sending soldiers into the Legislative Assembly to encourage the passage of a bill that would fund additional purchases of equipment for the police and armed forces.^[10] In May 2021, he led a move to fire the attorney general and five supreme court judges of El Salvador, which the United States Department of State and Organization of American States (OAS) denounced as democratic backsliding.^[11] Following the approval of bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador in September 2021, protests against Bukele's government took place. His announcement that he would run for reelection in 2024 led to criticism by constitutional law experts and organizations that presidential reelection violated the country's constitution.

Bukele has made several international visits to foreign nations as president, including the United States, Japan, China, Qatar, Guatemala, and Turkey. Additionally, he also made official visits to Taiwan and Israel during his tenure as mayor of San Salvador. Bukele has been critical of other Latin American leaders, including Daniel Ortega,, Nicolás Maduro, and Juan Orlando Hernández, calling them "dictators".

 

Terrorism Confinement Center ex Wiki
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The Terrorism Confinement Center (Spanish: Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, abbreviated CECOT)) a maximum security prison located in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador. The prison was built from July 2022 to January 2023 amidst a large-scale gang crackdown; it was opened in January 2023 by President Nayib Bukele and received its first 2,000 prisoners in February 2023.

As of March 2023, the prison has a population of over 4,000 inmates. With capacity for 40,000 inmates, it is the largest prison in Latin America. CECOT–as well as the gang crackdown on the whole–have been the subject of praise from the Salvadoran government, international media attention, and alleged human rights violations.
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El Presidente is not being nice to the customers.