New Ideas, the ruling party of re-elected Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, known for his support for Bitcoin, won an overwhelming majority of seats in the country's legislature.
On February 20, El Salvador's election watchdog reported that the New Ideas party had won 54 of 60 seats in the legislature, ensuring that Bukele will have the political means to continue his agenda. The results were part of the country's elections held on February 4. Bukele declared victory on February 5 before official results were published, suggesting that the New Ideas party won 58 seats instead of 54.
“EL SALVADOR – Legislative Assembly (60/60)
New ideas – 54
ARENA – 2
PCN-2
VAMOS – 1
PDC – 1″,– reports DatoWorld (@DatosAme24) February 19, 2024
Despite the president's claims of victory in the legislature, opposition groups are calling for the election results to be annulled, accusing them of voter fraud. VAMOS, Nuestro Tiempo and the Nationalist Republican Alliance are reported to have discovered 69 “anomalies” in the electoral process. Farabundo Martí's National Liberation Front party made similar accusations of fraud and voter manipulation.
Bukele took office in June 2019, becoming one of the few world leaders to openly support cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. He called on the El Salvadoran government to accept BTC as legal tender in September 2021, when the New Ideas party also had an overwhelming majority in the government.
Bukele calls himself “the toughest dictator in the world”. He is known for brutally cracking down on gang violence and reducing the country's murder rate, and has even been criticized for it.. The nation's leader's reign was marked by reports of human rights abuses in his attempts to suppress gang violence and reduce the murder rate in El Salvador. A March 2023 United Nations report said El Salvador had been subject to “mass incarceration” since 2022, leaving many people dead in custody or otherwise ill-treated.
During Bukele's time in office, El Salvador's Supreme Court changed the rules to allow the president to serve two consecutive terms rather than wait 10 years before running for re-election. Bukele stepped down in December 2023 to focus on his re-election campaign, leaving Claudia Rodriguez de Guevara as acting president until June 2024.
At the beginning of the year, Bukele won the elections convincingly. On February 22, he plans to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC. The gathering will include far-right members of the US Republican Party, Argentine President Javier Miley, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and former US President Donald Trump.