The “Bukelemania” encourages an election with no surprise in sight in El Salvador

There are no big banners or rallies, nor streets papered with the flags of political parties, but in The Savior The image of the president is not missing from the market stalls Nayib Bukelea big favorite for Sunday’s re-election.

Mugs, t-shirts, caps, key chains, watches, paintings, clay dolls, aprons or plaster piggy banks: at the Excuartel Crafts Market, in the historic center of San Salvador, sellers also seek to take advantage of the president’s popularity.

Oscar Martínez, 54, has just bought a blue t-shirt printed with a photo of Bukele giving a speech. In the background the colors of a sunrise and the phrase: “El Salvador is reborn.”

“I’m walking and the elections are coming and we are very excited to be able to vote. “Before we couldn’t travel because of fear of gangs,” says Martínez, who works in the United States in air conditioning maintenance.

Bukele, 42, is seeking re-election after the Supreme Court of Justice made an interpretation of the Constitution, which only allowed a five-year term.

According to the latest polls – they cannot be published on the eve of the vote – it will sweep. His rivals on the left and right appear with a single-digit voting intention.

Gloria de Echeverría, 53, says “there is a boom” of Bukele. “He made history in everything. “I have never seen so much product sold with the face of a president”he claimed.

In her shop, she even has pictures of the modern library built with a loan from China, recently inaugurated with great fanfare by Bukele in the historic center. “This one sells a lot”Explain.

Judith Alfaro also sells Bukele items but she is not very happy because she is part of the street vendors whom the government displaced from the streets of the historic center to renovate it.

A welcome “dictator”

Sitting waiting for customers next to an apron with Bukele’s face in dark glasses, Ana Hernández, 67, says that “A lot of his stuff sells because people love him.”

“That’s why they look for it and we sell it. For me he has been a good president, he does not compare himself to others,”Sure Hernández, with half a century of working in the market.

Although Bukele enjoys 90% popularity, according to Latinobarómetro 2023, due to the war against gangs, human rights activists assure that it is based on an exceptional regime, in force since March 2022, which allows arbitrary arrests and abuses.

Analysts and human rights groups also warn that Bukele controls all the powers of the State, which has founded an autocracy in El Salvador.

“If that were a dictator, welcome, because if it were a dictatorship like that, everyone would love it (…). With this president we have, Nayib Bukele, and the entire (Legislative) Assembly in favor, we are blessed”said Martínez.

Human rights? It doesn’t seem to worry much here. “Foreigners even say to us, lend us Bukele”says Echeverría, laughing.