The landslide re-election of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele was cheered by supporters of his gang crackdown, but has worried opponents who fear the country is sliding into a de facto one-party state.
The tallying of the vote was still ongoing on Monday but Bukele had appeared to deliver a crushing victory, with the backing of around 83% of voters. The president said his New Ideas party was on course to bag 58 posts in the 60-seat congress, although only 5% of the vote had been counted.
The result grants Bukele unprecedented control of the assembly, where last term he used his party’s supermajority to reshape institutions and pack the courts. One such tribunal let him seek re-election despite a constitutional ban on consecutive terms.
In his victory speech on Sunday night, Bukele said the opposition had been “pulverized” on the back of his popular anti-gang crackdown and emphasized that his victory was the result of a free vote.
“Democracy means the power of the people,” he said, lashing out at foreign governments, journalists and rights groups who have warned of an authoritarian drift and railing against the U.S. for its role in the country’s brutal 1979-1992 civil war.
El Salvador had “made history” for electing a single party “in a fully democratic system,” he said.
But rights groups said they are worried about where the country is headed and forecast further curbs on civil rights.