Nayib Bukele, a 37-year-old former mayor of San Salvador, ended 30 years of bipartisan rule by the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) with his election victory in February. [...]
Rampant crime is the main headache for most of El Salvador’s 6.6 million population. Bukele will inherit one of the most violent countries in the world, although under the outgoing FMLN government murders fell 15 percent in 2018. [...]
Much of the blame is pinned on El Salvador’s “maras” - international criminal gangs involved in drug trafficking and extortion that have some 70,000 members. Previous governments have tried, but failed, to broker lasting truces between them. [...]
El Salvador’s dollarized economy has not grown by more than 3% annually in the past decade and the government faces a steep challenge to shoulder external debts of over $9.5 billion without paring back welfare spending, analysts say.
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