El Salvador President on Trump Indictment: U.S. Can’t ‘Use ‘Democracy’ as Foreign Policy’ Anymore

The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, declared on Tuesday the arraignment of former American President Donald Trump meant the United States’ ability to pressure other countries to improve their own democracies was “gone.”

Bukele, who maintained friendly relations with Trump during the latter’s presidency that have cratered under leftist successor Joe Biden, has consistently condemned American law enforcement actions against Trump, branding them attempts to persecute and erase Biden’s top political rival in anticipation of the 2024 presidential election.

Trump was arrested in Manhattan on Tuesday on charges of falsifying business records. The 34 counts he faces, all related to alleged payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, could result in a maximum sentence for Trump of 136 years in prison, though the likelier scenario, if he is found guilty, would be closer to four years.

Speaking on Tuesday night following his arrest and arraignment, Trump denied the charges and accused the prosecutor making the indictment, Alvin Bragg, of “massive election interference at a scale never before seen in our country.”

Trump Calls Alvin Bragg a “CRIMINAL” for Illegal Leaks: “He Should Be Prosecuted”

Trump is officially a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.

“They can’t beat us at the ballot box, so they try and beat us through the law,” Trump asserted.

Bukele, communicating through his preferred social media outlet Twitter, described this arrest as a case of American powers-that-be silencing an opposition leader.

“Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being indicted,” he wrote. “But just imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate.”

Bukele declared that America’s “ability to use ‘democracy’ as foreign policy is gone.”

Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being indicted.

But just imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate.

The United States ability to use “democracy” as foreign policy is gone. https://t.co/svdFxtaf4q

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) April 4, 2023

Arrests and imprisonment of former presidents in Latin America is extremely common. Brazil’s currently president, radical leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was convicted and sentenced to upwards of 20 years in prison in 2017 on charges of taking bribes while president (the nation’s Supreme Court freed him on a technicality and allowed him to run for office again last year). In Bolivia, conservative interim President Jeanine Áñez, who took over after socialist Evo Morales fled the country, has been in prison for over a year simply for assuming the presidency as per the constitutional line of succession.

Peru has arrested and/or imprisoned at least three recent presidents: leftist Ollanta Humala, conservative Alberto Fujimori (who remains in prison currently), and the ideologically fluid Alan Garcia, who killed himself before police arrived to arrest him on corruption charges in 2019. In 2017, the long-imprisoned Fujimori reportedly welcomed Humala to prison with homemade sandwiches.

Bukele has repeatedly argued that America’s political influence abroad has eroded under Biden, using the legal treatment of Trump as an example. Last week, shortly after Trump announced that he had reason to believe he would be arrested, Bukele wrote, “it’ll be very hard for US Foreign Policy to use arguments such as ‘democracy’ and ‘free and fair elections’ … from now on.”

Sadly, it’ll be very hard for US Foreign Policy to use arguments such as “democracy” and “free and fair elections”, or try to condemn “political persecution” in other countries, from now on 🏻‍♂️ https://t.co/HQTv0vUuA2

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) March 31, 2023

Similarly, following the FBI raid on Trump’s estate, Mar-a-Lago, in August, Bukele asked, “What would the US Government say, if OUR police raided the house of one of the main possible contenders of OUR 2024 presidential election?”

Bukele’s relationship with the Biden administration soured rapidly as the State Department responded with concern and condemnation to the Salvadoran president’s declaration of a “state of exception” last year freezing certain civil liberties, primarily the freedom of assembly, to eradicate the country’s most powerful gangs. The state of exception allowed for tens of thousands of suspected gang members to be arrested; Bukele debuted a new 40,000-people “mega-prison” in February to allow the country to house all the new prisoners.

That same month, El Faro, a Salvadoran newspaper that has been heavily critical of Bukele in the past, published an extensive report arguing that the state of exception had largely destroyed the gang presence in the country, allowing civilians to run businesses without extortion and families to use public parks safely.

“The gangs do not exist in this moment as El Salvador knew them for decades,” El Faro reported.

While extremely popular at home, the state of exception attracted the condemnation of the State Department, as it technically freezes the constitutional rights of Salvadorans on a month-by-month basis and Bukele has not indicated any end in sight. The State Department’s annual global human rights report, released on March 20 but covering 2022, accused the Salvadoran government of:

 

unlawful or arbitrary killings, forced disappearances; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including censorship and threats to enforce criminal laws to limit expression; serious government corruption; lack of investigation and accountability for gender-based violence; significant barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health services; and crimes involving violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex individuals.

Last year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Biden administration was “concerned” about Bukele’s policies, particularly a law that limited the ability of the press to report on certain gang activity.

“The law lends itself to attempts to censor the media, prevent reporting on corruption and other matters of public interest, and silence critics of the Salvadoran government,” Blinken said.
That month, Bukele responded to Blinken’s comments, and the State Department claiming to support El Salvador’s efforts against gangs, by countering that the country only received support under Trump.

“You are only supporting the gangs and their ‘civil liberties’ now,” Bukele said at the time.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.