Just last week, thousands of people demonstrated against President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. With a joke on Twitter, he made fun of the protests. But it backfired.
In El Salvador, many people could not believe their eyes on Monday. Your President Nayib Bukele jokingly described himself as the dictator of the Central American country on Twitter. The 40-year-old changed his first from “Layla’s father” to “Dictator of El Salvador” and then again to “The coolest dictator in the world”, as confirmed by the presidency of the AFP news agency.
Now there is growing concern among the population that Bukele could soon get serious with his joke. Last week, for the first time, thousands of people took to the streets in El Salvador’s capital to protest against the president’s latest legislative reform. Bukele’s Twitter activity is also viewed with suspicion in the United States. The top US diplomat in El Salvador warned of a “decline in democracy”.
Bukele tries to ridicule the opposition
Nayib Bukele was elected president in 2019 because he promised to crack down on corruption and organized crime. However, the opposition increasingly accuses him of authoritarian tendencies. After Bukele’s New Ideas party won a Congressional majority that year, it promptly replaced five Supreme Court justices. Shortly thereafter, the highest court paved the way for a second presidential term – which has not been possible before.
These five judges are now on the US State Department’s list of “undemocratic and corrupt actors”. The changed electoral law is clearly not allowed under the constitution. “What are we now seeing? A decline in democracy, and that is exactly what is happening,” said US chief diplomat Jean Manes.
According to President Bukele, the US decision to put the chief judges on the list has “nothing to do with corruption”. He called it “pure politics and the lowest form of interventionism” and wrote “We’re nobody’s backyard” on Twitter. He also criticized the protests. The demonstrators “took to the streets to fight against a dictatorship that doesn’t exist”.
By jokingly using the term “dictator” on Twitter, Bukele wanted to “normalize” it and discredit those who used it against him, said Laura Andrade, an expert at the Central American University’s Institute for Public Opinion in El Salvador. Civil rights attorney Eduardo Escobar from the Citizen’s Action initiative also sees Bukele’s Twitter profile description as “part of the president’s strategy”. “He tries to ridicule the feelings of the public or the opposition,” criticized Escobar.
Sources: “”, with AFP
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