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Colombian 'Bukeles' Want Power

2023-05-17T10:51:34.353Z

Highlights: A poll says that 55% of Colombians would like a president like the Salvadoran. Some local candidates promise to import their security model. Nayib Bukele likes to say that he is a chosen one of God and now he will be able to say he has been elected alter ego of the Colombian ultra-right. The traditional right arrives at the polls in low hours, after its failure in the 2022 general elections, where its presidential candidate did not even go to the second round. The Salvadoran president embodies everything Uribe once was, albeit taken to the next level.


A poll says that 55% of Colombians would like a president like the Salvadoran. Some local candidates promise to import their security model


Nayib Bukele likes to say that he is a chosen one of God and now he will be able to say that he has been elected alter ego of the Colombian ultra-right. A few years ago, when the seed of the far-right Vox party was growing in Spain – the same one that was absent from Congress when Colombian President Gustavo Petro was going to speak – its leader Santiago Abascal coined a term: "the cowardly right." By him he meant the traditional conservative parties, such as the Popular Party, which had been taking power with the Socialists since the restoration of democracy. Abascal came to say that this right had been distorted, that he and his people represented the true, the brave. That division of a right considered pure and another reviled as decaffeinated spread quickly throughout Europe and now does so in Latin America. Kast in Chile, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Milei in Argentina. It is also making its way in Colombia, where, in the absence of national leadership, more and more people are looking outside their borders for the model to import: that of the Salvadoran president and his authoritarianism.

Colombia enters election season, on October 29 local elections will be held. The appointment is key for Petro, not only because they are the first of his mandate, but because it depends on them whether the regional power is on the side of his presidency or the opposite. The traditional right arrives at the polls in low hours, after its failure in the 2022 general elections, where its presidential candidate did not even go to the second round. The visible heads of the opposition are blurred, leaving the spotlight to the senator of the most radical wing, María Fernanda Cabal. She was among the first to declare herself an admirer of the president of El Salvador a couple of months ago. The seed not only ignited, but a Datexco poll for W Radio published this week assures that 55% of Colombians would like a president like Bukele for their country.

In a country that has known little peace, cradle of guerrillas, paramilitaries, drug traffickers and criminal groups, security has always been at the center of the debate. The right, as has happened in other countries, capitalizes in Colombia on its defense and the armed forces. This is due, in part, to the security policy implemented by Álvaro Uribe, who came to power in one of the crudest moments of the war and who managed, with an iron fist, to corner the FARC and stop the stark violence that not only targeted the inhabitants of the regions, but also but locked the capitalinos in their apartments in Bogotá. Uribe earned the respect of many who prioritized security over human rights, even as the former president's two terms were tainted by the false positives scandal, a system that rewarded the military for the death toll and took the lives of 6,000 innocent people posing as guerrillas.

Bukele connects many Colombians with that Uribe they miss so much and no longer recognize. The former president now lives with only half a foot in politics and his last most outstanding interventions have been for his surprising statements in favor of Petro, with whom he has already sat down three times and whom he has even defended in a meeting in which an exalted (of his own) began to shout against him for ex-guerrilla. "In my presence, no insult to the president of the Republic," the politician asked. From that day on, the most Uribista members knew that they were orphaned by a leader.

El Salvador's president embodies everything Uribe once was, albeit taken to the next level. Bukele has focused his entire policy on the war against gangs and has managed to reduce violence at the cost of accumulating abuses against rights and freedoms. Salvadorans, accustomed to decades of violence that placed the country as the most violent in the world, forgive everything. He is the most popular president in the region.

Bukele came out proudly this Sunday to celebrate that the country had, according to him, 365 days without homicides. A supposed peace that was broken on Tuesday with the murder of a policeman. The president's response was furious: "Let all the "human rights" NGOs know that we are going to wipe out these damn murderers and their collaborators, we will put them in prison and they will never get out. We don't care about their pitiful reporting, their prepaid journalists, their puppet politicians, or their famous "international community," which never cared about our people. We will heal our country and eliminate this plague completely. Take your failed recipes elsewhere."

Let all the "human rights" NGOs know, that we are going to destroy these damn murderers and their collaborators, we will put them in prison and they will never get out.

We don't care about their pitiful reporting, their prepaid journalists, their puppet politicians, or their famous "community... https://t.co/qtBIzNdyXu

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) May 16, 2023

The Salvadoran's recipe has been seen in recent months in the images of thousands of handcuffed, half-naked and kneeling Calleros, prepared to fill what is already the largest prison in Latin America, a prison built by the president to house 40,000 people. That prison also entered the Colombian debate.

"Do you agree or disagree with the mega-prison built by President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador?" asked the same poll in Colombia. 67% answered yes. The question, beyond an apparent campaign to bukelize Colombian politics, is sustained because Petro attacked the prison through Twitter. Cabal was able to attract Bukele to Colombia, but the president served as a speaker for a couple of weeks, in which he referred to the Salvadoran on many occasions on social networks. Semana magazine also took advantage of the pull and gave it a cover that was titled: "The Bukele miracle."

Imitators have not been long in appearing. Insecurity remains one of the main issues in the country. The total peace that Petro seeks to pacify the country with negotiations with all criminal groups has not yet borne fruit. In recent days, a candidate for mayor of Cali, the right-wing Jaime Arizabaleta, has presented himself as the Colombian Bukele. "You have to get advice from those who know, that's why I will approach the Bukele government to see what we can adapt from its security model and that bandits, thieves and hitmen have their comeuppance," he said.

He is not the only one, the candidate for mayor of Valledupar Camilo Quiroz, who has not militated on the right, even traveled to El Salvador last week: "Valledupar hurts me and to protect it, I am willing to cross borders. Insecurity is fought hand in hand with those who know, so I thank the government of Nayib Bukele and the mayor [of San Salvador] Mario Durán, for opening the doors of San Salvador and being willing to visit Valledupar to help us overcome this wave of violence and crime."

There are still five months until the local elections, the candidacies are still being defined, and it remains to be seen if the Salvadoran worshippers win at the polls. But a single glance at Twitter shows that this model's follower base is growing. An account of the social network that calls itself Opposition launches from time to time the following message: "We urgently need a Bukele for Colombia."

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-05-17

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