El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who is nicknamed the "World's Coolest Dictator," declared his re-election victory after winning 85% of the vote.
The Sunday announcement comes despite electoral officials not yet releasing any results for the country's race. The president was the heavy favorite to win another five-year term as votes largely cast aside concerns regarding the erosion of democracy to reward him for a fierce gang crackdown.
His efforts worked toward improving security in the Central American country. The 42-year-old Bukele said that his New Ideas party was also able to capture at least 58 positions in El Salvador's 60-seat legislative assembly. He cited unspecified information that he had access to.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Bukele said that it was a record in the entire democratic history of the world. Electoral officials have not yet commented on the results as polls will close at 5:00 p.m., which was about two hours before the president declared victory, as per Reuters.
Now, the president appears poised to become the first Salvadoran leader in nearly a century to be re-elected. If Bukele's predictions are accurate, he will wield unprecedented political power and be able to overhaul the country's constitution. This is something that his opponents fear will result in scrapping of term limits.
Bukele campaigned on the success of his security strategy under which authorities suspended civil liberties. With this, they were able to arrest more than 75,000 Salvadorans without charges, which led to a sharp decline in nationwide murder rates. It transformed a country of 6.3 million people that had previously been among the world's most dangerous.
However, some analysts have argued that mass incarceration of 1% of the entire population is not sustainable in the long term. Hours prior to Bukele's declaration, he held a press conference where he said that his party needed all the support it could muster to maintain its anti-gang fight and continue his efforts to reshape El Salvador.
While the country's constitution prohibits re-election, Bukele's party's victory in the 2021 legislative elections resulted in the newly-elected Congress to purge the nation's constitutional court, replacing judges with loyalists, according to Time.
Addressing Gang Violence
Later, they ruled that the president could run for a second term and critics have argued that he has chipped away at the country's system of checks and balances. The president on Sunday night had his face plastered on much of downtown San Salvador's main square. It was on flags, shirts, and life-size billboard cutouts.
One resident, Delta Rodriguez, joined hundreds of people who celebrated early in Salvador's main plaza. She wore a T-shirt with Bukele's face on it that read, "Everyone for re-election." She said that she considers herself a fan of the president.
It was also the first time since the country's civil war ended in 1992 that El Salvador held the election under a state of emergency, which was imposed for the president's crackdown on criminal gangs.
The people of the nation were hoping that a victory for Bukele meant that the country would be able to build on the successes of the reduction in crime, doing away with gang violence, and tackling other serious problems, including poverty, said Aljazeera.
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