Bukele: the savior? (II)

Some readers objected to my previous column, in which I showed how Bukele had dismantled judicial independence in El Salvador in order to run for immediate re-election, arguing that my analysis ignored two fundamental facts: (i) Bukele’s great popularity and (ii) his success in reducing gang-related homicidal violence.

These two facts are true, but I do not believe they make Bukele’s attack on judicial independence democratic.

In a democracy, majorities have the right to govern, but that does not mean they can make any decision, because a democracy without limits runs the risk of nullifying itself. We need only imagine a very popular leader who calls and wins a plebiscite that declares him eternal president with full powers. That decision, despite popular support, is anti-democratic, as it prevents other majorities from emerging and being able, in turn, to aspire to govern in the future according to their visions.

Democracy, to be genuine, must therefore act in a similar way to Odysseus when he tied himself to the mast to avoid the temptation of the sirens: in order not to give in to the temptation of majority tyranny, democracy must tie its hands a little through the controls inherent to the rule of law: separation of powers, judicial independence, and the guarantee of fundamental rights. If a president breaks these controls, he becomes anti-democratic, no matter how popular he is, because he is destroying the rule of law. And experience has shown that without the rule of law, no true democratic regime has persisted. The concentration of power allows the ruler to stifle freedoms, manipulate public opinion, and perpetuate himself in power. At first, it is the opponents who suffer; in the end, despotism annuls the very power of the majorities. Or if not, let’s remember the Fujimori regime.

Bukele’s great popularity therefore does not make his assault on the rule of law legitimate, as he is destroying the foundations of democracy, just as similar assaults by Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, or Chavismo in Venezuela have not been.

On the other hand, it is true that Bukele has significantly reduced homicidal violence, but he has done so with unacceptable means and at an enormous human and institutional cost: the state of exception, which has been in place since March 2022, has led to more than 60,000 arrests, most of them arbitrary. The detainees are crowded into prisons where they receive cruel and inhuman treatment, as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have pointed out. In addition, as the religious organization Cristosal has documented, at least 153 people have died in police custody, probably as a result of torture or executions, but the number could be much higher.