[Al Jazeera] El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele
… a Trump-admiring neo-conservative politician who has set himself to clean out the Communist nonsense in his country. His father is a descendant of Palestinian Christians who converted to Islam and built several mosques around the country, explaining the name. Both father and son were strong supporters of the Castro-linked FMLN, but after they threw Nayib out he formed his own party and swept into office in 2019 on the promise of wiping out the narco gangs, beating both the conservatives and the socialists. After jailing 80,000 accused gangsters for whom he built Latin America’s largest prison, he claims El Salvador is now the safest country in the Western Hemisphere, making his reelection a useful marker for the kinds of things that terrify America’s Democrats… is set to be sworn in for a second term, riding on a wave of popularity that has helped him consolidate his power and influence in the country.
The 42-year-old, who unapologetically describes himself as a "cool dictator", was re-elected in February with 85 percent of the vote. He is set to govern for another five years with near-total control of parliament and other state institutions.
The former publicist and mayor will take the oath of office at the National Palace in the capital, San Salvador, on Saturday.
The ceremony is due to be attended by dignitaries including Spanish King Felipe VI and Argentinian President Javier Milei, with whom Bukele shares an admiration for former United States President Donald Trump
 ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and whatever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
, whose son and namesake is also attending the event.
On Friday, inauguration preparations were disrupted by reports that police thwarted a plot to detonate explosives at locations across the country.
Bukele enjoys sky-high approval ratings due to his brutal crackdown on criminal gangs, credited with returning a sense of normality to a violence-fatigued society.
The campaign has drawn criticism from rights groups but has made Bukele the most popular leader in Latin America, according to a regional poll.
Bukele’s New Ideas party scored a near-clean sweep in legislative elections, where it took 54 of 60 seats.
Yet experts warn his extended honeymoon with voters may be nearing its end as economic worries overtake safety concerns in the public discourse, amid high government debt and fast-rising prices for consumer goods in a country where more than a quarter of the six million population lives in poverty.
Food inflation, meanwhile, has outpaced salary increases while public debt has skyrocketed on his watch to more than $30bn, or 84 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
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