Nayib Bukele facts for kids
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Nayib Bukele
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Official portrait, 2019
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| 43rd President of El Salvador | |
| Assumed office 1 June 2019 |
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| Vice President | Félix Ulloa |
| Preceded by | Salvador Sánchez Cerén |
| 13th Mayor of San Salvador | |
| In office 1 May 2015 – 30 April 2018 |
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| Preceded by | Norman Quijano |
| Succeeded by | Ernesto Muyshondt |
| Mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán | |
| In office 1 May 2012 – 30 April 2015 |
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| Preceded by | Álvaro Rodríguez |
| Succeeded by | Michelle Sol |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez
24 July 1981 San Salvador, El Salvador |
| Political party | Nuevas Ideas (since 2017) |
| Other political affiliations |
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| Spouse |
Gabriela Rodríguez
(m. 2014) |
| Children | 2 |
| Parent |
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| Education | Central American University (no degree) |
| Occupation | Politician, businessman |
| Cabinet | Cabinet of Nayib Bukele |
| Signature |  |
Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez (Spanish pronunciation: [naˈʝiβ buˈkele]; born 24 July 1981) is a Salvadoran politician and businessman currently serving as the 46th president of El Salvador since 1 June 2019. He is the first Salvadoran president since 1989 who was not elected as a candidate of one of the country's two major political parties: the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), of which Bukele was formerly a member. He is also the first Salvadoran president to be re-elected since 1944.
Beginning in 1999, Bukele worked at an advertising company owned by his father and also established his own advertising company. Both his and his father's companies advertised election campaigns for the FMLN. In 2011, Bukele announced that he would enter politics, and in 2012, he officially became a member of the FMLN. That year, he was elected as the mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán and served until 2015. That same year, Bukele was elected as the mayor of San Salvador and served until 2018. In 2017, Bukele was ousted from the FMLN, and shortly afterwards, he founded the Nuevas Ideas political party with which he sought to pursue a presidential campaign in 2019. After the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) refused to register his party, Bukele ran for president with the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA) and won with 53 percent of the vote.
Politicians, activists, and journalists have accused Bukele of governing in an authoritarian and autocratic manner.
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Early life
Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez was born on 24 July 1981 in San Salvador, El Salvador. His father was Armando Bukele Kattán, a businessman and industrial chemist, and his mother is Olga Marina Ortez; Bukele's father died in 2015. Bukele was the couple's first child. He has three younger brothers: Karim, Yusef, and Ibrajim. He also has four half-sisters and two half-brothers from his father's side of the family. Bukele's father converted to Islam from Christianity in the 1980s, became an imam, and founded four mosques in El Salvador; Bukele's mother is a Roman Catholic. Bukele's paternal grandparents were Palestinian Christians who immigrated to El Salvador from Jerusalem and Bethlehem in 1921; Bukele's maternal grandfather was a Greek Orthodox and his maternal grandmother was a Roman Catholic.
Bukele completed his secondary education from the Escuela Panamericana in 1999 at the age of 18. He enrolled at the Central American University in San Salvador to study judicial sciences with aspirations to become a lawyer, but he dropped out to work for the Nölck advertising agency, one of his father's businesses. Nölck campaigned for the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a left-wing Salvadoran political party.
In 1999, Bukele founded Obermet, S.A. de C.V. (also known as 4am Saatchi & Saatchi El Salvador), a marketing company. He served as its president from 1999 to 2006 and again from 2010 to 2012. This company ran political advertising for the FMLN presidential campaigns of Schafik Hándal in 2004 and Mauricio Funes in 2009. From 2005 to 2007, Bukele was the president of CLS, a company which issued Salvadoran passports. From 2006 to 2010, Bukele was the president of Nölck, for which he previously worked for. From 2009 to 2012, Bukele was the president of Yamaha Motors El Salvador, a company that sells and distributes Yamaha products in El Salvador. During Bukele's career as a businessman, he described himself as a "businessman with a great future" ("empresario con gran futuro").
Early political career
Mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán
On 11 March 2012, he was elected mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán, in the department of La Libertad, representing a coalition of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) with 2,754 votes (49.72%) and Democratic Change (CD) with 108 votes (1.95%), for a total of 2,862 votes (50.68%), defeating the incumbent Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which won 2,585 votes (46.67%). He took office on 1 May 2012.
During his term, he donated his salary to the scholarships that he was offering for youths in Nuevo Cuscatlán. On 21 January 2015, Bukele inaugurated a new boulevard which connected Nuevo Cuscatlán with Huizúcar and Antiguo Cuscatlán. Bukele performed much of his works as mayor with funding from ALBA Petróleos, an association owned by the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA.
Mayor of San Salvador
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In the municipal elections of 2015, he won the mayoralty of San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador, representing a coalition of the FMLN and the Salvadoran Progressive Party (PSP) that won 89,164 votes (50.37% of total). His main challenger, businessman and former ARENA deputy Edwin Zamora in a coalition with the National Coalition Party (PCN), received only 82,288 votes (46.49%). The latter party had controlled the city during the previous six years. Bukele took office on 1 May 2015.
Upon taking office, Bukele reverted the names of two streets in San Salvador: Calle Mayor Roberto D'Aubuisson to Calle San Antonio Abad A La Vía and Boulevard Coronel José Arturo Castellanos to Boulevard Venezuela. Both names were changed by his predecessor, Norman Quijano, during his term, the former being named after Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, who ordered the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero in 1980 during the Salvadoran Civil War and founded ARENA in 1981, and the latter being named after Colonel José Castellanos Contreras, who saved 40,000 Jews from the Holocaust in Central Europe by providing them fake Salvadoran passports. Bukele began his "revitalization" of San Salvador with the relocation of street sellers, a change which was positively received by the public and the media. He also built the Cuscatlán Market and San Salvador's first municipal library.
In February 2017, Bukele visited Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, and met Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to "enhance" the sister city relationship between San Salvador and Taipei. In February 2018, he attended the 32nd International Mayors Conference in Jerusalem, where he was seen praying at the Western Wall, and revealed that his wife's grandfather was a Sephardic Jew. During the last months of his term, Bukele brushed up the historic center of San Salvador by expanding roads, remodeling buildings, and rebuilding electric and telecommunication lines, all costing around $5.7 million.
Expulsion from the FMLN
On 10 October 2017, Bukele was expelled from the FMLN, accused by the FMLN Ethics Tribunal of promoting internal division within the party, verbally and physically attacking fellow party member Xóchitl Marchelli, performing defamatory acts against the political party, and heavily attacking and criticizing incumbent FMLN President Salvador Sánchez Cerén. Bukele did not attend the hearing scheduled for 7 October 2017 by the FMLN Ethics Tribunal, arguing that they were biased in favor of the plaintiffs. The FMLN lost 20 municipalities and 8 seats in the Legislative Assembly in the subsequent 2018 legislative election. Some political experts have speculated that the losses were in part due to the expulsion of Bukele from the FMLN.
Election as president
After Bukele's expulsion from the FMLN, his aspirations towards 2019 moved in the direction of participating in the presidential elections as an independent who rejects the current political system. He had wanted to run for president as a member of the FMLN; however, resistance from party leadership prevented him from doing so. He established the political party Nuevas Ideas ("New Ideas") with the goal of making it a political party where he could run as a candidate for the presidency of El Salvador.
Following the announcement of his presidential aspirations, he was opposed by both the ruling FMLN party on the political left, and ARENA on the political right, as they blocked any attempts for him to found his own political party and politically canceled any party that he has attempted to use for his candidacy, as they did so with Democratic Change. His attempt to run with the party ended when the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) effectively dissolved the party. Bukele eventually joined the center-right Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA) party to mount his presidential bid.
On 3 February 2019, Bukele announced that he had won the presidential elections with ease. Challengers Carlos Calleja of the ARENA and Hugo Martínez of the FMLN conceded defeat. He won 53 percent of the vote, thereby eliminating the need for a run-off election. He is the first candidate to win the presidency since the end of the Salvadoran Civil War who did not represent either of the major two parties. In his victory speech he declared, "Today we have turned the page on the postwar period".
Presidency
Presidential inaugurations
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Bukele's first presidential inauguration was held on on 1 June 2019. Bukele held his inauguration ceremony at the National Palace due to its location in the Gerardo Barrios Plaza which he renovated as mayor of San Salvador. He held the ceremony here instead of in the Blue Room (meeting room) of the Legislative Assembly in an effort to portray himself as focusing his presidency towards the country's population. Bukele's supporters booed and insulted the deputies of the Legislative Assembly as they were introduced. Bukele announced a cabinet of sixteen people composed of eight men and eight women.
Bukele's second presidential inauguration was held on 1 June 2024, again at the Gerardo Barrios Plaza. During the inauguration, the Armed Forces of El Salvador (FAES) preformed a military parade and Bukele wore a Napoleonic cut jacket with gold finishes as a show of force. He also self described his second inauguration as "the most important moment in our recent history" ("el momento más importante de nuestra historia reciente").
Political crises
Beginning in November 2019, Bukele sought to secure a US$109 million loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration to fund phase three of the Territorial Control Plan, but the legislature, which was controlled by ARENA and the FMLN, asked Bukele to grant them more time to evaluate the loan. On 6 February 2020, Bukele invoked article 167 of the country's constitution calling for an emergency meeting of the Legislative Assembly to approve the loan. Bukele also called for his supporters to rally around the Legislative Assembly during the emergency meeting which was scheduled for 9 February 2020. On the day of the emergency meeting, Bukele ordered 40 soldiers into the Legislative Assembly's meeting room to intimidate legislators to approve the loan, however, an insufficient number of legislators attended and the loan was not approved. Opposition politicians described the incident, known in El Salvador as "9F" or "El Bukelazo", as a "self-coup".
In the 2021 legislative elections, Nuevas Ideas won supermajority in the Legislative Assembly. On 1 May 2021, Nuevas Ideas formed a governing coalition with GANA, the National Coalition Party (PCN), and the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). That same day, the governing coalition voted to remove the five justices of the Supreme Court of Justice's constitutional court as well as Attorney General Raúl Melara. The five justices were replaced by five of Bukele's allies, and Melara was replaced by Rodolfo Delgado. The incident, known in El Salvador as "1M", was described by journalists and opposition politicians as a "self-coup" and a "power grab". The incident was also condemned by the United States.
COVID-19 pandemic
The first case of COVID-19 in El Salvador was confirmed on 19 March 2020. As of 5 January 2023, El Salvador had 201,785 confirmed cases and 4,230 deaths, and as of 16 December 2022, 11,343,183 doses of the vaccine had been administered.
On 21 March 2020, Bukele instated a nationwide lockdown in an effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic which was to last 30 days. During the lockdown, 4,236 people were arrested by the National Civil Police for violating the lockdown order. Human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, have criticized the arrests. Human Rights Watch also criticized the living conditions of prisoners in El Salvador following Bukele's authorization of the "use of lethal force" by the National Civil Police and the government's release of prisoners being lined up in San Salvador, referring to the living conditions as being "inhumane" and being critical of the move, especially as it was during the COVID-19 pandemic. On 27 May 2020, the United States donated 250 ventilators to El Salvador. During the press conference where Bukele received the ventilators, he stated that he took hydroxychloroquine. On 22 June 2020, Bukele inaugurated the Hospital El Salvador, the largest hospital in Latin America used exclusively for treating cases of COVID-19, having a capacity of 400 beds, 105 intensive care units, 295 intermediate care units, and 240 doctors.
In January 2021, Transparency International cited both El Salvador and Colombia as examples of "an explosion of irregularities and corruption". Transparency International cited the Corruption Perceptions Index of 2020 as its basis. Twenty of Bukele's government institutions were under investigation by the attorney general on suspicions of corruption relating to the pandemic; however, the investigations were halted after the attorney general was removed by the Legislative Assembly on 1 May 2021.
On 13 May 2021, Bukele donated 34,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to several towns and villages in Honduras after pleas from local mayors for vaccines. At the time, El Salvador had received 1.9 million doses, while Honduras had only received 59,000. Bukele donated 44,000 more doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to Honduras on 19 June 2021 after Mexico had donated 154,100 doses to Honduras the day prior.
Adoption of bitcoin
On 5 June 2021, Bukele announced at the Bitcoin 2021 conference that he would introduce a bill to the Legislative Assembly which would allow the usage of the cryptocurrency bitcoin as legal tender, claiming that it would "generate jobs" and promote "financial inclusion" in the short term. The Legislative Assembly approved the bill on 8 June 2021. While the World Bank rejected a request from the Salvadoran government to assist it with the implementation of bitcoin as legal tender, citing concerns over transparency and the environmental effects of bitcoin mining, Athena Bitcoin announced that it would invest US$1 million into installing 1,500 bitcoin ATMs. This would allow users to exchange U.S. dollars for bitcoin and vice versa.
On 7 September 2021, bitcoin officially became legal tender in El Salvador, which became the first country to do so. Bitcoin became legal tender alongside the United States dollar, which had been adopted in 2001 after replacing the Salvadoran colón. The day bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador, its price fell from US$52,000 per bitcoin to under US$43,000. Additionally, Apple and Huawei were not offering Chivo, Salvadoran government-backed digital wallet, on their platforms. Around 1,000 protesters marched in the streets of San Salvador to express their opposition to the country's adoption of bitcoin.
The day before bitcoin officially became legal tender, Bukele announced that the Salvadoran government had bought its first 200 bitcoins. Bukele continued to buy more bitcoins as its price declined throughout 2021 and 2022, during which, El Salvador lost up to US$56 million by June 2022. Economist Steve Hanke stated that El Salvador had "the most distressed sovereign debt in the world" due to its adoption of bitcoin, and other economists predicted that the country would likely default on its debt. During Bukele's first term, El Salvador was the slowest growing economy in Central America. As the price of bitcoin rose to US$44,000 in December 2023, Bukele announced that El Salvador's investment into bitcoin had broken even. In March 2024, Bukele revealed that El Salvador had made a 50% in profit off of bitcoin. Bukele mocked news media outlets on Twitter by claiming that there were "literally thousands of articles" about El Salvador's bitcoin losses and that those same outlets were now "totally silent". As of March 2024[update], the Salvadoran government has 2,380 bitcoins.
In November 2021, Bukele announced that he planned to build Bitcoin City in the southeastern region of La Unión at the base of the Conchagua volcano. The city would use geothermal energy to power bitcoin mining. Ricardo Navarro, the head of the El Salvadoran Center of Appropriate Technology, criticized the plan and claimed that it would result in an "environmental disaster". Bukele published images of models of Bitcoin City and its planned airport on Twitter in May 2022 and claimed that the city would have "no income tax, zero property tax, no procurement tax, zero city tax, and zero CO2 emissions". In December 2023, the Legislative Assembly passed a law which allowed individuals to purchase Salvadoran citizenship by donating bitcoins to El Salvador.
Foreign policy
In June 2019, Bukele stated that his government would no longer recognize Nicolás Maduro as the president of Venezuela, instead, recognizing Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's legitimate president amidst Venezuela's presidential crisis. On 3 November 2019, Bukele expelled Maduro-appointed Venezuelan diplomats from El Salvador. Bukele considers Maduro to be a dictator. Bukele refused to recognize the presidency of Manuel Merino in Peru in November 2020, describing his government as "putschist". Bukele and the Legislative Assembly denounced the results of the 2021 Nicaraguan general election, which were widely been seen by several governments as fraudulent. From 2022 onwards, El Salvador has abstained from resolutions critical of Nicaragua at the Organization of American States, with Bukele's government citing "non-interference" ("no injerencia") as its justification. In 2024, El Salvador was the only country to abstain on an OAS resolution to condemn Ecuador for raiding the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas.
During Bukele's presidency, he has met with foreign state leaders to improve El Salvador's bilateral relations. These state leaders include United States President Donald Trump in September 2019, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in November 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping in December 2019, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei in January 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in January 2022, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in May 2022, and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in September 2023.
Relations with the United States
During Bukele's September 2019 meeting with Trump, Bukele called on Trump to promote legal migration in an effort to combat illegal immigration and to maintain the United States' Temporary Protected Status (TPS) policy for Salvadorans living in the United States. The following month, Bukele confirmed that the United States would continue TPS for Salvadorans. In February 2021, Biden refused to meet Bukele when he arrived unannounced in Washington, D.C. with the intentions to meet Biden. Bukele did not attend the 9th Summit of the Americas of June 2022 due to frustrations over the U.S. government's allegations of corruption and human rights abuses committed by his government.
Some members of the Democratic Party have been critical of Bukele's government, while some members of the Republican Party have supported Bukele and his policies. In April 2021, Bukele and Norma Torres, a U.S. congresswoman representing California's 35th congressional district, engaged in an argument on Twitter regarding illegal immigration at the United States' southern border. In November 2022, Torres accused Bukele of interfering in that month's 35th congressional district election by endorsing Republican challenger Mike Cargile. In January 2024, fourteen Democratic congress members sent a letter to Biden to address Bukele's "authoritarian" actions.
Relations with China
In 2018, El Salvador cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan and recognized the People's Republic of China as the legitimate government of China. This led to both Bukele and the United States to accuse China of interfering in both Salvadoran and Latin American politics. Despite Bukele's criticism of China before becoming president, Ulloa stated in May 2019 that Bukele's government would not restore diplomatic relations with Taiwan. In December 2019, Bukele met Xi Jinping in China and signed a "gigantic" infrastructure agreement with China for an unknown amount. El Salvador and China have cooperated on infrastructure projects in El Salvador such as the National Library of El Salvador (completed in November 2023) and the National Stadium of El Salvador (commenced construction in November 2023).
In November 2022, Bukele announced that El Salvador and China had entered negotiations for a free trade agreement between the two countries. China donated fertilizer and wheat flour to El Salvador, and according to a Salvadoran government official, China also offered to buy El Salvador's external bond debt. Bukele stated that a free trade agreement with China was "very important" due to El Salvador having been "isolated from [the] potential" provided by China's economic strength.
Municipal and legislative reductions
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In December 2022, Bukele tweeted that he believed that the country's 262 municipalities should be reduced down to only 50 municipalities. He stated that it was "absurd" ("absurdo") that the country, around 8,100 square miles (2.1×1010 m2) in size, was divided into 262 municipalities. Some lawyers and politicians criticized Bukele's proposed reduction as an attempt to consolidate power and as gerrymandering. Meanwhile, Bukele's allies supported the proposal, with some also proposing reducing the number of seats in the Legislative Assembly.
On 1 June 2023 during a speech celebrating his fourth year in office, Bukele announced that he would present two proposals to deputies of the Legislative Assembly. One proposal sought to reduce the number of seats in the Legislative Assembly from 84 to 60, while the other sought to reduce the number of municipalities from 262 to 44. Bukele justified the legislative reduction by stating that the legislature had 60 seats before the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in 1992 that ended the Salvadoran Civil War. He continued by claiming that the only thing the peace accords accomplished was adding 24 seats to the legislature. For the municipal reduction proposal, Bukele added that the 262 municipalities would retain their cultural identities and be given the classification of districts. The Legislative Assembly approved the proposal for legislative reductions on 7 June 2023 and approved the proposal for municipal reductions on 13 June 2023. Both reductions are scheduled to go into effect on 1 May 2024.
2024 re-election campaign
On 3 September 2021, the Supreme Court of Justice ruled that the president is eligible to serve two consecutive terms in office. The ruling overturned a previous 2014 ruling which held that presidents had to wait ten years until being eligible to run for re-election. Constitutional lawyers criticized the ruling, stating that consecutive re-election violates El Salvador's constitution. The 2021 ruling allowed Bukele to run for re-election in the 2024 presidential election. Both ARENA and the FMLN protested the court's ruling. A representative of ARENA calling the ruling a "precursor to a dictatorship" while a representative from the FMLN claimed that the state is serving only one person, in reference to Bukele. The ruling was also condemned by the United States government. Jean Elizabeth Manes, the chargé d'affaires of the United States to El Salvador, claimed that the ruling was "clearly contrary to the Salvadoran constitution". According the Manes, the ruling was a direct result of the legislature replacing the judges of the Supreme Court in May 2021.
On 15 September 2022, Bukele officially announced that he would be running for re-election in 2024 during a speech celebrating El Salvador's 201st anniversary of independence. Bukele justified his announcement by claiming that "developed countries have re-election, and thanks to the new configuration of the democratic institution of our country, now El Salvador will too". Constitutional lawyers criticized his announcement, stating that presidential re-election violates "at least" four articles of the El Salvador's constitution.
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On 26 June 2023, Bukele officially registered as a presidential pre-candidate with Nuevas Ideas. Ulloa registered as Bukele's vice presidential pre-candidate. On 9 July 2023, Nuevas Ideas officially nominated Bukele and Ulloa as their presidential and vice presidential candidates, respectively. On 26 October 2023, Nuevas Ideas officially initiated the process to register Bukele and Ulloa's candidacies with the TSE, the last possible day to do so. On 3 November 2023, the TSE officially registered their candidacies amidst various requests made to the TSE by the opposition to reject Bukele's candidacy.
On 30 November 2023, the Legislative Assembly granted both Bukele and Ulloa leaves of absence to focus on their re-election campaign. The leave of absence, which suspended Bukele's presidential powers, went into effect the following day. The Legislative Assembly named Claudia Rodríguez de Guevara, Bukele's presidential secretary, as the presidential designate and became the first woman in Salvadoran history to hold presidential powers. Rodríguez's appointment was criticized by some lawyers and opposition politicians unconstitutional.
Including Bukele, there were six presidential candidates in the 2024 election. Bukele's primary opponents were ARENA's Joel Sánchez, a businessman, and the FMLN's Manuel Flores, a former legislator. Bukele led both Sánchez and Flores by large margins in opinion polling conducted prior to the election. Throughout Bukele's campaign, he promised to maintain the gang crackdown, invest in infrastructure projects, and promote economic growth during his second term. On 4 February 2024, Bukele won re-election with 84.65 percent of the vote. The final results were announced on 17 February 2024 due to technical issues with electronic voting systems. Bukele became the first Salvadoran president to be re-elected since Maximiliano Hernández Martínez in 1944. Additionally, Nuevas Ideas retained its supermajority in the Legislative Assembly, and together with its allies, it won 43 of the country's 44 municipalities. Several news media outlets described the election results as a "landslide victory" for Bukele and Nuevas Ideas. On 29 February 2024, the TSE granted Bukele and Ulloa their presidential and vice presidential credentials, respectively. Bukele's second term began on 1 June 2024.
Personal life
Family
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Bukele married Gabriela Rodríguez, a psychologist and ballet dancer, on 6 December 2014. The couple have two children: their first, Layla, was born on 15 August 2019; their second, Amineah, was born on 8 November 2023.
Wealth
According to the Salvadoran government's transparency website as of July 2019[update], Bukele's presidential annual salary is US$5,181. According to the same website, Bukele has a net worth of US$2,548,967 as of July 2019[update]. Bukele acquired most of his wealth through his business ventures before he entered politics.
Religion
Bukele does not identify with any religion, however, he has stated that he believes in God and Jesus.
Honors
In December 2019, Beijing International Studies University conferred an honorary doctorate on Bukele. In 2021, Time named Bukele as one of the world's 100 most influential people.
Political views
In September 2012, shortly after being elected mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán representing the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party, Bukele described himself as being part of the "radical left". During his presidency, he has adopted conservative policies. However, one of his campaign slogans is "public services should be better than private ones". Bukele's political views have sometimes been referred to by some journalists as the ideology of "Bukelism". He has been compared to Donald Trump for his style of government, rhetoric, and criticism of the press.
Public transport
Bukele promised to sanction bus carriers that increase the rates established by law. Elements of the Police were deployed in different parts of the country to guarantee compliance with the regulations. During his presidential campaign, Bukele proposed the construction of a new airport in the east of the country to relieve congestion from El Salvador International Airport and bring an economic boost to the country's east. On 26 April 2022, the Legislative Assembly passed a law to begin construction of the Airport of the Pacific and the Train of the Pacific. The new rail network will be 332 miles (535 kilometers) long, and the new airport will be 126,530 square feet (11,755 square meters) in size in La Unión.
Social issues
Bukele has stated that he is opposed to same-sex marriage and believes marriage is between "a man and woman".
Emigration
In an interview with Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, Bukele attributed mass emigration from Central America to the United States to the region's "lack of economic opportunity" and "lack of security", and described the status quo as "immoral", arguing that emigration not only strains the United States, but also impedes domestic efforts to improve living conditions in El Salvador. In an interview with VICE News' Krishna Andavolu shortly after his inauguration, Bukele stated, "I share the same concern President Trump [has with] immigration, but for different reasons. [...] He doesn't want our people to go; I don't want our people to leave".
Electoral history
The following table displays Bukele's electoral history.
| Year | Office | Type | Party | Main opponent | Party | Votes for Bukele | Result | Swing | Ref. | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | % | P. | ±% | ||||||||||||
| 2012 | Mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán | General | FMLN–CD | Tomás Rodríguez | ARENA | 2,862 | 51.67 | 1st | N/A | Won | Gain | ||||
| 2015 | Mayor of San Salvador | General | FMLN–PSP | Edwin Zamora | ARENA–PCN | 89,164 | 50.38 | 1st | N/A | Won | Gain | ||||
| 2019 | President of El Salvador | General | GANA | Carlos Calleja | ARENA–PCN–PDC–DS | 1,434,856 | 53.10 | 1st | N/A | Won | Gain | ||||
| 2024 | President of El Salvador | General | NI | Manuel Flores | FMLN | 2,701,725 | 84.65 | 1st | +31.55 | Won | Hold | ||||
See also
In Spanish: Nayib Bukele para niños
