Nayib Bukele He completed four years of presidency of El Salvador and announced a new battle following the results of his crusade against the gangs, as outlined in a speech to Congress.

In the middle of his speech last Thursday, Bukele said a special prison will be built for “white-collar criminals.” He also indicated that he will promote a legal reform to reduce the number of legislative seats from 84 to 60 and to reduce the number of municipalities from 262 to 44.

“Today we declare war on corruption,” the president said, after considering it an “endemic” evil that, “like the gangs, has tentacles at all levels of the Salvadoran state.”

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“Just as we have fought the gangs head-on, with all the might of the state, with all the legal means we have, we will also without hesitation start the frontal war against corruption,” the president said.

Bukele promised that “a prison” will also be built for “white-collar criminals”, just as he has built a mega prison for gang members.

“We will also build a prison for the corrupt. We will confiscate everything they have and we will make sure they return what was stolen,” he promised.

Bukele assured that the “war” against corruption will take place at all levels as it is being carried out by state officials in collusion with “private businessmen”.

“In this country, the corrupt spend all their time thinking about how to get more money out of the state treasury (…) and beware, for the corrupt official there is also a corrupt businessman,” he said.

The president did not specify corruption figures, although he assured that acts of corruption do not allow the state to allocate resources to social areas or other needs of the population.

According to the secretary general of the opposition party Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), Óscar Ortiz, he pointed out that Bukele is looking for the “total concentration of power” in the executive branch and generating “fear” in the population.

“We have witnessed a decision to continue to concentrate power, to disrespect any minimum independence that the constitution requires from the fundamental organs of the state,” the FMLN secretary said at a news conference.

He pointed out that “there’s no plan to shrink municipalities, it’s an invention, there’s no design, there’s no dialogue.”

“What is sought is the total concentration of power, but not for the country, but for a small number, a very narrow group, who form great dark alliances with new oligarchic sectors of the country,” he repeated.

He pointed out that they are also seeking “a design to consolidate a political and economic group that abuses all state institutions and circumvents the constitution.”

Ortiz assured that “we are facing an accelerated and profound dismantling of what we know as the Salvadoran state.”

“Goodbye to political plurality, to public institutions, to the necessary and fundamental balance of power for any sensitive or growing democracy,” he added.