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LatinNews Regional Monitor: Caribbean & Central America - 21 February 2020

EL SALVADOR: Bukele ratchets up pressure on deputies

“These are difficult days in which you have decided to support and protect the Salvadorean people when we know that the majority of politicians are protecting the criminals; days in which we know that deputies and former ministers financed the criminals that you are going to have to pursue and capture,” President Bukele said, addressing the soldiers during a ceremony in front of the old national palace in San Salvador on 18 February. Bukele indirectly held deputies responsible for any military casualties in the battle against the gangs. He accused deputies of denying economic resources to provide the military with bulletproof jackets, uniforms, helmets, boots, and night vision devices.

Bukele did not carry out his threat after the military takeover to dissolve the legislative assembly should deputies fail to approve the loan within a week. But hundreds of his supporters, rallied online, did demonstrate outside the assembly on 16 February to demand the loan’s approval. Bukele, meanwhile, sought to repair his battered image abroad with an opinion piece in The Miami Herald on 15 February and a letter responding to a critical article in The Washington Post two days earlier in both of which he insisted that “I respect the separation of powers”.

Bukele defends actions

In his opinion piece in The Miami Herald President Bukele argued that “My administration was deeply concerned about a popular uprising of frustrated Salvadorans mobilized against the National Assembly. This is why we asked the military to be present...Certain media interests falsely reported this as an attempt to take over that institution. But let me be clear: I respect the separation of powers. Anyone who suggests I was attempting to do such a thing is purposefully misrepresenting the truth.” This itself ‘misrepresents the truth’, however, as it was Bukele who called on his supporters on social media to converge on the assembly (and his party supplied buses to get them there), encouraging them to exercise their right to insurrection.

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