By all accounts, El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is headed to a landslide reelection when the Central American nation holds its presidential election.
The energetic 42-year-old president and self-described “philosopher king” has blazed a trail of success in his first term in office by all but eliminating the presence of violent gangs through aggressive crackdowns, and overhauling the government of a country that has been beset by corruption for decades.
Among these changes is Bukele’s reelection campaign, which was made possible by a ruling of the nation’s Supreme Court. Prior to this, presidents were limited to one term in office.
But as Bukele coasts to reelection as one of the most popular democratically elected leaders in the world, his tough-on-crime approach and aggressive politicking have angered the likes of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and other far-left members of Congress in the United States.
In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Omar and other House Democrats urged the U.S. government to interfere with El Salvador’s presidential election by condemning Bukele’s gang crackdown and cut the nation off from “security assistance.”
“It is not the place of the United States government to determine who is eligible to run for President in a foreign country, nor to pick winners,” Omar and the lawmakers wrote. “We are nevertheless alarmed that some of the State Department’s public messaging on the elections has been overly credulous toward President Bukele’s re-election bid, and his governance.”
In a post on X, Bukele shot back and said he was “honored” to receive Omar’s attacks.
We are HONORED to receive your attacks, just days before OUR election.
I would be very worried if we had your support.
Thank you
https://t.co/7V5a0AdpCV
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) January 31, 2024
“I would be very worried if we had your support,” he said. In another post, he quipped, “I think the United States should have free and fair elections.”
In his revolutionary transformation of El Salvador, Bukele has made all of the right enemies. There are few better signs that you are doing something right than drawing the ire of Ilhan Omar, who, despite being a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, has recently indicated that her loyalties actually lie with Somalia.
In 2019, the year that Bukele took office, El Salvador had 36 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants. For a country with a population of 6.3 million, it made the murder rate one of the highest in the world. But in 2023, that number had fallen to 2.4, which was itself a 70% drop from 7.8 in 2022. As recently as 2021, El Salvador still recorded over 1,000 murders a year. In 2023, 154 people were killed in the entire year.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Meanwhile, in the city of Chicago, which has a population of 2.7 million people — less than half the population of El Salvador — there were 617 murders in 2023, nearly four times as many as the tiny Central American nation. The homicide rate in the United States at large was 5.5 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, which was still more than twice the murder rate of El Salvador.
It’s a borderline miraculous change for a nation whose history has been marred by violence for decades, and it entirely explains why Bukele is wildly popular. But Ilhan Omar and her ilk would rather the people of El Salvador suffer under gang violence and feel the need to flee to the United States. It is good that Bukele can count them as enemies.