Nayib Bukele claims landslide victory and says Spanish democracy is a colonial fraud in impassioned speech to supporters

Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s millennial president, attacked Spanish colonialism and imperialism in a fiery victory speech after he won a landslide victory.

Amid claims he is turning the country into a dictatorship, he boasted to flag-waving crowds below the presidential palace that El Salvador would be the first country with “a one-party system in a democracy”.

“The entire opposition together was pulverised,” Mr Bukele, who once styled himself the “world’s coolest dictator”, told the cheering masses.

The baseball cap-wearing Mr Bukele, 42, has become vastly popular for his war on gangs, but he has also been accused of stifling the courts and silencing opposition.

In his speech he said a Spanish journalist had recently asked him why he wants to dismantle democracy.

  • osarusan@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    Dictatorships are not intrinsically bad.

    You can have good dictators, even if they are rare.

    Hard disagree there.

    But it really depends on what you value as good and bad.

    For instance, if you think that people have an inherent right to have a say in how they are governed, then a dictatorship can never be good because it infringes on that right in the most serious of ways.

    If you think a stable and sustainable system of government that will last beyond the life of a few leaders is important, then dictatorship is not a good system, because one good dictator creates no guarantee that the next dictator will be good, and establishing a system of dictatorship affords a bad dictator that much more power to ruin lives.

    • maness300@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      if you think that people have an inherent right to have a say in how they are governed

      What about when people vote against their own interests?

      What about when the majority suppresses minorities?

      • osarusan@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        What about when people vote against their own interests?

        They have the right to do so.

        What about when the majority suppresses minorities?

        That is a bad thing. But talk about a dictatorship?? That’s one person suppressing everybody else.

        • maness300@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          So it’s better to be ruled by gangs than a dictator?

          The people who were afraid to leave their homes that can now go outside made the wrong decision by electing a government to solve their problems?

          Or, more realistically, you’re too indoctrinated to understand how their real problems are more important than your philosophical ones.

          That’s one person suppressing everybody else.

          Oh no! Somebody think of the gangbangers!

          • osarusan@kbin.social
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            10 months ago

            The fuck are you talking about?

            You’re replying to things I didn’t say. Are you hearing voices or something?

            Try again. Do better.

      • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        If people vote against their own interests, it is solely their fault, there is no way around it, deal with the consequences and do better next time. Saying that people must be protected against themselves means that you believe that your fellow human beings are inherently inferior to you and that they are not rational beings, akin to animals.

        If you believe that you have intellectual superiority but you are not able to communicate that to your fellow countrymen, then you have failed thoroughly at being a politician, or you are not as superior as you think you are.