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El Salvador will hold presidential elections this Sunday. If the polls are to be believed, the outcome is a foregone conclusion: President Nayib Bukele will win in a landslide. Recent polling shows the president with over 70% support.

His rivals from the traditional parties, the right-wing ARENA and left-wing FMLN, trail far behind in single digits. In fact, some polls predict that Bukeles New Ideas Party could win 57 out of 60 seats in the National Congress. The bigger issue is the impact Bukeles reelection will have on the future of democracy.

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Democracy demands free, fair and competitive elections. This means that electoral rules must be clear and fairly applied, competitors must have equal access to the media, and state resources should not be used to favor one candidate over others.

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In Central America, the legacy of authoritarianism and military governments led nearly every country to constitutionally restrict reelection as a bulwark against presidential abuse of power. In the past decade, however, presidents have sought to use control of the judiciary to loosen the restrictions on reelection. Both Juan Orlando Hernndez in Honduras and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua were allowed to seek and win reelection through questionable legal maneuvering by compliant supreme courts.

The same has now happened in El Salvador. Bukeles re-election was permitted in September 2021 after a constitutional ruling by the Supreme Court. Faithful to the president who appointed them, the justices reinterpreted the Salvadoran constitution, which explicitly prohibits, in at least five articles, the immediate re-election of the president. According to the courts ruling a sitting president can seek re-election if he or she leaves office at least six months before the election.

In November 2023, the legislature dominated by Bukeles party dutifully gave the president the green light to take a leave of office for six months. The legislature installed Claudia Rodrguez de Guevara, Bukeles private secretary, and longtime employee, as the acting president. Interestingly, the leave did not remove Bukeles presidential immunity, thus shielding the president from any legal liability while he is out of office.

Bukele rose to power by challenging a system that, he argued, was based on obsolete ideological frameworks, and rooted in the dominance of corrupt elites. His approach has been characterized as personalist, populist, and autocratic. He has skillfully used social media, particularly X (formerly Twitter), to disseminate his message. His X handle has gone from the coolest dictator in the world to Philosopher King. As a former public relations executive, Bukele and his team are well versed in setting the agenda, nurturing a favorable image and neutralizing opponents.

Bukeles popularity can also be explained by his tough security policies. For decades prior to Bukeles rise to power in 2019 El Salvador was among the most violent countries in the world. The legacy of a brutal civil war and the consequences of U.S. deportation policies led to the rise of violent gangs such as the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18. As a result, the homicide rate rose to 70 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2005, and 103 in 2015 the highest in Latin America.

Bukeles signature security policy is based on a state of exception in force since March 2022 that cracked down on the gangs but also suspended certain civil liberties, including due process. The policy has resulted in more than 74,000 people, suspected of being gang members, arrested and imprisoned. On Bukeles watch, El Salvador has claimed the highest rate of incarceration in the world, around 2% of its adult population.

El Salvadors prison system was already notorious for overcrowding, violence and a breeding ground for gang members. There is little evidence that Bukele has made any progress in improving those conditions. In fact, he has boasted of making prisons an even worse experience in an apparent attempt to deter criminal activity.

While the government claims all those arrested are gang members, recent police reports indicate that at least 40,000 gang members still remain at large. If true, it means that thousands of those arrested have little to no connection with gangs and the strategy, while partially successful in reducing violence has come at a high price in civil and human rights.

While the mass incarceration has coincided with a significant drop in homicides, theres evidence that the spikes and drops in violence are also the results of negotiations with the gangs, rather than directly connected to Bukeles Territorial Control Plan. For example, as a result of these negotiations the Salvadoran government apparently allowed Elmer Canales Rivera, alias Crook, a top leader in the Mara Salvatrucha, to escape the country. U.S. court documents revealed that gang members were routinely allowed in and out of prison with impunity, and press reports claimed that Canales Rivera lived in luxury in one of the most exclusive areas of the capital, despite the fact that Washington had requested his extradition on multiple occasions and that an Interpol red notice was in force.

Canales Rivera was arrested by FBI agents in November 2023 in Mexico and extradited to the United States. In a revealing twist to this saga, investigative news outlet El Faro published evidence that the government of El Salvador had actually negotiated with Mexican cartels to recapture Crook before he could be extradited to the United States. The Salvadoran government has repeatedly denied negotiating with the gangs.

What happens in El Salvador has direct consequences in the United States, both because of a large diaspora and continued migration pressures. The Biden administration seems to be pursuing a middle road between condemning some of the populist and authoritarian behavior, such as the lack of independence of the judiciary and the attacks on NGOs and the press, but has also dispatched high-level emissaries to negotiate with Bukele on economic assistance and migration policy. The United States is gambling that El Salvador will still have a democracy after Bukele is done consolidating power.

Bukele is not the first leader to manipulate popular support and a strong electoral mandate to undermine democracy. From Venezuelas Hugo Chvez to Hungarys Viktor Orbn and Nicaraguas Daniel Ortega, the playbook is familiar: win the election, use the levers of power to manipulate the media, exacerbate social and political divisions, use state resources to win further elections, and then seek to remake the political system by changing the constitution and subordinating independent agencies, and politicizing security forces. Finally, use the new rules to maintain and extend power. Nearby Nicaragua is a clear example of what happens when a leader is allowed to manipulate the political system to consolidate power and create a one-party state. I hope for the sake of El Salvadors citizens that this is not where Bukele is headed.

Orlando J. Prez is a professor of political science in the University of North Texas at Dallas

Part of our series The Unraveling of Latin America. This essay discusses the Salvadoran elections and the autocratic traits of its president running for reelection.

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Why Bukeles reelection is a threat to democracy in El Salvador - The Dallas Morning News