El Salvador: 86.5% approve President Bukele’s performance in 2 years of government

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – 86.5% of Salvadorans approve President Nayib Bukele’s performance in two years of government, although some of his actions “hurt his image before the population” but “not in a critical way”, according to a survey of the local newspaper La Prensa Gráfica (LPG) published this Tuesday.

The poll was carried out between May 13 and 22 of this year, with a national sample of 1,103 interviews with adults, a sampling error of +/- 3% , and a confidence level of 95%.

When respondents were asked if they approve or disapprove of the President’s work so far, 86.5% answered that they approve, 9.1% disapprove and 4.3% did not answer, according to the data of the survey conducted by LPG Datos, the social research unit of La Prensa Gráfica.

In these two years of work, the president’s image has been underpinned by the perception that the country has improved in security and that the pandemic has been well managed, he points out.

At the end of Bukele’s first year in office, for example, the citizenry ranked improvements in security as the main achievement and the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in second place.

Bukele’s main achievements now, according to citizens, are the management of the pandemic, improvements in the health sector, and the fight against crime.

Bukele’s government attributes the drop in homicides since he took office in 2019 to the government’s territorial control plan, which concentrates some 9,000 members of the Armed Forces and more than 23,000 agents of the National Civil Police (PNC).

The plan seeks to regain control of gang-controlled territories and is attributed to a significant reduction in homicides, with 1,322 murders in 2020.

According to the Presidency, this homicide figure is below the one registered in 2019, when 2,398 violent deaths were computed.

BUKELE’S ACTIONS HURT HIS IMAGE

The information suggests, according to the analysis, that “the president’s actions against the democratic institutionality of the country hurt his image before the population, but not in a critical way.”

The president was strongly criticized after, in February 2020, he entered the Chamber of Parliament escorted by soldiers and policemen armed with assault rifles to pressure the deputies for the approval of a loan to finance one of the phases of the territorial control plan.

Opposition deputies, who at the time were the majority in the Legislative body, denounced an attempted “coup d’état”.

Now, Bukele and the country are under the critical eye of the international community after the dismissal of five constitutional court judges and the attorney general by Congress, a decision supported by the president and which, for several sectors, represents a concentration of power in his figure.

Bukele is expected to attend the Legislative Assembly this Tuesday to report on his second year in office and this would be the first time he does so since he suspended this speech in his first year in office.