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This unaltered story was originally published at ProPublica.org. [1]
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Young Leader Vowed Change in El Salvador but Wields Same Heavy Hand
Author Name, ProPublica
2020-05-05 00:00:00
MEXICO CITY — Salvadorans took a gamble when they elected Nayib Bukele president: He was a political outsider, a millennial who had run his campaign largely over social media and offered few concrete details about how he would govern.
Still, voters in El Salvador swept him into office, hoping for a change that would improve lives in a country long hobbled by corruption, poverty and some of the world’s highest murder rates.
His actions in recent months, however, have left many Salvadorans — lawyers, business leaders, human rights advocates, journalists and others — afraid that Mr. Bukele is backsliding into the kind of authoritarian leadership the country fought a civil war to overturn.
In February, Mr. Bukele marched soldiers into Congress to intimidate lawmakers to push through a bill. The following month, he brushed aside Supreme Court orders to stop using the military to detain quarantine violators. Later, he advocated the use of lethal force in a crackdown on the criminal gangs that drive up the country’s murder rate.
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[1] URL:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/world/americas/el-salvador-nayib-bukele.html
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