Why El Salvador’s crypto bro president is cruising to reelection

Watch and learn, Kim Jong Un: The self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator,” El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, is expected to win reelection in a landslide tomorrow.

Bukele is best known globally for making bitcoin legal tender in his country and for having the Central American nation host flashy events, like last year’s Miss Universe pageant. But that’s not why the millennial hypebeast has a 71% lead, according to one poll.

Tough on crime

Bukele owes much of his popularity to a brutal, draconian crackdown on violent gangs that had plagued the nation for years:

• At least 70,000 suspects (over 1% of El Salvador’s population) have been thrown behind bars under an ongoing state of emergency that doesn’t require due process.
• Homicides in El Salvador dropped almost 70% last year, and now other countries in the region want to replicate Bukele’s iron-fisted measures.

But Bukele isn’t just fighting crime. He’s also alarming democracy watchdogs by changing the country’s election system and filling its top court with loyalists who have reinterpreted the Constitution to allow him to run for a second term.

The economy isn’t doing so hot…the nation’s $120 million bitcoin portfolio looks like it might finally be in the green, and El Salvador’s tourism industry is growing. But economic growth is slow, and nearly half the population experiences food insecurity.—SK