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El Salvador's Bukele: The posterboy for popular authoritarianism
Here's one country where democracy is on the backslide, and the increasingly authoritarian leader could not be more popular. El Salvador's Nayib Bukele won the presidency at 37, as Latin America's youngest elected head of state, as an outspoken candidate on social media with an affinity for cryptocurrency.
In a wide-ranging interview on the state of global democracy in 2024, Stanford's Francis Fukuyama explains Bukele's crime-fighting appeal: "El Salvador legitimately elected Nayib Bukele as president, but he embarked on this massive effort to simply round up people that he thought were gang members and put them in prison, no trial, no, judicial process to find out whether they're actually guilty or not. And as a result, around 10% of the young men in the country are now sitting in prison. Uh, and it's been quite successful in reducing the level of gang violence in El Salvador by like 90%."
And Bukele's approval rating today stands at about 90%. It's just one example of a democratically elected leader pushing the boundaries of what his constitutional mandate allows.
Watch the GZERO World with Ian Bremmer episode: Divided we fall: Democracy at risk in the US
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
Divided we fall: Democracy at risk in the US
2024 is gearing up to be a pivotal year for global democracy, with elections testing authoritarian appeal, particularly in the United States.
2023 was a year of war, in Europe, of war in the Middle East, and beyond. So it's safe to say that the year to come will not be all honey and roses. But here's a prediction: Even if 2024 may not be a GOOD year, it WILL be the most consequential one for the future of democracy, both abroad and here in the United States.
Around the world, elections will test the limits of authoritarian appeal and the guardrails of democratic institutions. That includes right here in the United States. And this comes at a time when one-quarter of Americans believe that the FBI was behind the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. That’s right, one quarter. So, there’s not a lot of shared trust amongst Americans—or even shared agreement on basic facts—as we head toward November 5. The renowned Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama is here to discuss the global and domestic threats to democracy in 2024.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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Podcast: America vs itself: Political scientist Francis Fukuyama on the state of democracy
Listen: In this edition of the GZERO World podcast, Ian Bremmer speaks with Stanford’s Francis Fukuyama about the state of democracy worldwide and here in the US. 2024 will be a pivotal year for democracy, and nowhere more so than here at home. A quarter of Americans believe that the FBI was behind January 6. But as the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” But today, in America, we cannot agree on basic facts. On this note, Fukuyama joins Bremmer to discuss the global and domestic threats to democracy.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
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El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele registers his candidacy to seek reelection in 2024.
El Salvador's Bukele benefits from bond boom
Nayib Bukele, the strongman president of El Salvador, certainly has his critics. He’s angered human rights activists with his sledgehammer crackdown on gang violence. He has antagonized the opposition by using the military to intimidate Congress and appointing judges who helped him wriggle out of term limits. Even the US has warned the youthful and irreverent Bukele about undermining his country’s fragile democracy.
And yet … Bukele enjoys a staggering 91% approval rating among ordinary Salvadorans, who see his strongman tactics as the price to pay for safer streets in one of the world’s most violent countries. The official homicide rate has fallen by half over the past year.
Now add one more group to the Bukele fan club: bond investors. The country’s sovereign debt is delivering 60% returns in 2023, the best performer in the world.
A year ago, by contrast, Salvadoran bonds were worth barely a quarter of their face value, as Bukele’s bet on bitcoin went up in smoke, he was unable to agree to terms for a badly needed IMF bailout, and markets worried about default. Since then, Bukele has calmed Wall Street by twice buying back huge tranches of El Salvador’s outstanding debt, and by appointing an ex-IMF official as one of his top advisers.
Whether his authoritarian streak will have longer-term negative consequences for El Salvador’s politics and civil society remains to be seen – but for now, Wall Street is betting big on Bukele.
Hard Numbers: Bukele 2024, German troops in Lithuania, Manipur unrest, Chinese deepfake scam
154: On Monday, El Salvador's strongman President Nayib Bukele officially registered to run for reelection next year. Although the Supreme Court — packed with Bukele loyalists — ruled in 2021 that this doesn't violate constitutional term limits, opposition lawyers say a second term is expressly forbidden by Art. 154.
4,000: Germany will permanently deploy 4,000 troops in Lithuania, as the Baltic nation has been demanding for years in order to protect NATO's eastern flank. It's the latest example of Germany’s changing defense policy amid the Zeitenwende ("historic shift") in response to Russia's war in Ukraine.
50: India's government has ordered the chief minister of northeast Manipur state to up his game on restoring peace there after more than 50 days of continued unrest. The violence erupted in early May, after the BJP-led state government granted the Meitei community — which accounts for half of the population — Scheduled Tribe status, giving them certain privileges that other Manipur minorities resent.
400,000: An influencer with almost 400,000 followers on Douyin (Chinese TikTok) had his account banned for scamming people into ordering fake Russian products from his e-commerce biz by masquerading as a Russian soldier fighting in Ukraine. The AI-generated “Pavel Korchatie" was exposed as a deepfake when users noticed that the IP addresses of the videos were located in Henan province, China.