On Sunday, Salvadoran voters handed 39-year-old President Nayib Bukele what appears to be a two-thirds supermajority in the country’s Legislative Assembly. With 90 percent of the votes counted, his recently formed political party, Nuevas Ideas (“New Ideas”), and an allied fringe party captured at least 61 of a total 84 seats. Meanwhile, the opposition virtually collapsed.
The vote looks set to consolidate an overhaul of the country’s politics that began in 2019. That year, Bukele—a former Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) mayor of San Salvador—ran for president on an anti-corruption platform with a new party. He then won the first round of the election with 53 percent of the votes: a result that shook the political establishment to its core. But until now, Nuevas Ideas has not been represented in the assembly, leaving the president with only 11 reliable votes from an allied group. Sunday’s results have decimated the opposition. With his new power in the assembly, Bukele may rapidly concentrate power, which observers fear could lead to democratic backsliding in the country.
