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AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySwayStacey Abrams on American Idealism and American Betrayal Abrams helped win major Democratic victories in Georgia, the right is retaliating and it’s getting personal. But Abrams says she doesn’t mind; it’s all about the long game.More episodes ofSwayMarch 4, 2021 • More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGeorgia Takes Center Stage in Battle Over Voting RightsTwo bills moving through the Republican-controlled Legislature would place new restrictions on voting access, in ways Democrats say would have an outsize impact on Black voters.A protest of a bill that would restrict voting access outside the State Capitol in Atlanta on Monday.Credit…Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressRichard Fausset, Nick Corasaniti and March 3, 2021Updated 7:14 a.m. ETATLANTA — After record turnout flipped Georgia blue for the first time in decades, Republicans who control the state Legislature are moving swiftly to implement a raft of new restrictions on voting access, mounting one of the biggest challenges to voting rights in a major battleground state following the 2020 election.Two bills, one passed by the House on Monday and another that could pass the Senate this week, seek to alter foundational elements of voting in Georgia, which supported President Biden in November and a pair of Democratic senators in January — narrow victories attributable in part to the array of voting options in the state.The Republican legislation would undermine pillars of voting access by ending automatic voter registration, banning drop boxes for mail ballots and eliminating the broad availability of absentee voting. The bills would restrict early voting on the weekends, limiting the longstanding civic tradition of “Souls to the Polls” in which Black voters cast ballots on Sunday after church services.Taken together, the new barriers would have an outsize impact on Black voters, who make up roughly one-third of the state’s population and vote overwhelmingly Democratic.Black voters were a major force in Democratic success in recent elections, with roughly 88 percent voting for Mr. Biden and more than 90 percent voting for Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the January runoff elections, according to exit polls.Democrats say that Republicans are effectively returning to one of the ugliest tactics in the state’s history — oppressive laws aimed at disenfranchising voters. “Rather than grappling with whether their ideology is causing them to fail, they are instead relying on what has worked in the past,” Stacey Abrams, the voting rights activist, said, referring to what she said were laws designed to suppress votes. “Instead of winning new voters, you rig the system against their participation, and you steal the right to vote.”The Georgia effort comes as former President Donald J. Trump continues to publicly promote the lie that the election was stolen from him, which has swayed millions of Republican voters. It has also put further pressure on Republican state legislatures across the country to continue drafting new legislation aimed at restricting voting rights under the banner of “election integrity” as a way of appeasing the former president and his loyal base.New restrictions on voting have already passed in Iowa, and multiple other states are lining up similar efforts, while the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments this week on another challenge to the Voting Rights Act. Should the high court make changes to Section 2 of the act, which allows after-the-fact challenges to voting restrictions that may disproportionately affect members of minority groups, Democrats and voting rights groups could be left without one of their most essential tools to challenge new laws.People waited in line to vote early at a community center in Suwanee, Ga., in October.Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York TimesJustice Elena Kagan, in her questioning on Tuesday, appeared to allude to Georgia’s proposed limitations on Sunday voting.“If a state has long had two weeks of early voting and then the state decides that it is going to get rid of Sunday voting on those two weeks, leave everything else in place, and Black voters vote on Sunday 10 times more than white voters, is that system equally open?” Justice Kagan asked.For decades, Georgia has been at the center of the voting rights battle, with Democrats and advocacy groups fighting back against repeated efforts to disenfranchise Black voters in the state.As recently as 2018, Georgians faced hourslong lines to vote in many majority-Black neighborhoods, and thousands of Black voters were purged from the voting rolls before the election. Now Democrats and voting rights groups are alarmed that Republicans are again trying to change the state’s voting laws ahead of critical Senate and governor’s races in 2022.Though the bills in the Legislature have not been finalized, it is expected they will eventually reach the desk of Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican. Mr. Kemp has not explicitly backed either bill, but he said on Tuesday morning that he was in favor of efforts “to further secure the vote.”“I’m supportive of putting the photo ID requirement on absentee ballots by mail and other things, making sure that there’s a fair process to observe,” Mr. Kemp told the radio host Hugh Hewitt. He said his decision on the bills would depend on “what it is and what’s in it.”Democrats, shut out of power in the Statehouse despite holding both United States Senate seats, are relatively powerless in the legislative process to stop the bills, though they do have avenues through the courts to challenge any final bill signed.In an interview on Tuesday, Ms. Abrams, the former Democratic minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, called Monday’s House vote “a sign of fear” over Republicans’ failure to win support from young and minority voters, two of the fastest-growing sectors of the state’s electorate.She added that the measure was also potentially self-defeating for the G.O.P. in that large percentages of rural white voters, a traditionally Republican-leaning bloc, could also be impeded by laws that make it harder for citizens to cast absentee ballots and vote by mail.Asked about restrictions to Sunday voting, Ms. Abrams cited a study by the Center for New Data, a nonprofit group, that found Black voters were more likely to vote on weekends than white voters in 107 of Georgia’s 159 counties. Over all, 11.8 percent of Black voters voted on weekends compared with 8.6 percent of white voters, according to the study.“We know that some version of this bill is likely to pass because Republicans face an existential crisis in Georgia,” Ms. Abrams said, portraying the party as shortsighted in refusing to address the factors that have put its traditional demographic advantages at risk in recent elections.Stacey Abrams, the voting rights activist and 2018 Democratic nominee for governor, may challenge Gov. Brian Kemp again in 2022.Credit…Nicole Craine for The New York TimesAmong the most pressing concerns for Georgia Democrats is the possibility that the House’s bill, H.B. 531, might be amended in the Senate to include provisions that put an end to automatic voter registration and a vote-by-mail system known as “no excuse,” which allows any voters to cast mail ballots if they choose. These proposals were included in a bill that passed out of a Senate committee last week.The automatic registration system, which registers voters when they apply for or renew a driver’s license, was put in place in 2016 under the Republican governor at the time, Nathan Deal.Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, another Republican, has credited the system with drastically increasing voter registration numbers, and Republicans have cited such figures to push back against charges leveled by Ms. Abrams and others that Georgia Republicans want to suppress votes.No-excuse absentee voting was approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2005 and was used by many voters during the pandemic. In December, Mr. Raffensperger supported ending no-excuse absentee voting, saying it “opens the door to potential illegal voting.”Mr. Raffensperger took that stance even as he defended Georgia’s electoral system against accusations by Mr. Trump that the election was somehow rigged; his refusal to support the former president’s baseless claims earned him the enmity of Mr. Trump and Georgia Republicans allied with him.Mr. Raffensperger’s office did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday on the current legislative efforts in the Legislature, including the House bill, which would remove the secretary of state from his role as chair of the State Elections Board.Cody Hall, a spokesman for Mr. Kemp, repeated an oft-used phrase of his, saying that the governor wanted to make it “easy to vote and hard to cheat” in Georgia.Kasey Carpenter, a Republican state representative whose district is a conservative swath of Northwest Georgia, said the House bill included a number of common-sense provisions that Democrats would be supporting if it were not for the intense partisan nature of the times. Changes to mail-in procedures, he said, were particularly important given the sharp increase in people who chose to vote that way because of the restrictions of the pandemic.“I think what you’re seeing is a measured approach,” he said.For example, Mr. Carpenter said, the bill requires voters to put the number of their driver’s license or state identification card on applications for a mail-in ballot, and requires photocopies to be sent in only if the voter is using alternative forms of identification.Mr. Kemp, a Republican, has not explicitly backed either bill, but said he favored efforts “to further secure the vote.”Credit…Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesIf a highly restrictive bill ends up on Mr. Kemp’s desk, he will be faced with a complicated dilemma.On the one hand, the governor must show his Trump-loyal Republican base that he has heard and responded to their concerns about election integrity. Doing so will be particularly important if Mr. Trump, who was incensed that Mr. Kemp did not take steps to overturn his electoral defeat in Georgia, carries out his threat to back a primary challenger on Mr. Kemp’s right flank.On the other hand, if Ms. Abrams chooses to engage Mr. Kemp in a rematch of their 2018 contest, she and her allies are likely to once again make allegations of voter suppression one of their most forceful and incessant attack lines against Mr. Kemp.In an electorate still reeling from the two-month effort to subvert the election result by Mr. Trump, and the rash of lawsuits attacking voting before and after the election, the bills in Georgia have quickly attracted national attention. More Than a Vote, a group founded by LeBron James, the basketball superstar, has vowed to draw attention to the issue during the N.B.A. All-Star game this weekend in Atlanta; his pledge was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Voting rights groups note that the severe limitations put on early voting could also have a cascading effect: By limiting the number of hours available for in-person voting, the bottlenecks created during high-volume times and on Election Day would very likely lead to more hourslong lines, like the waits that plagued the Georgia primary in June.“They’re creating a line management problem,” said Aunna Dennis, the executive director of Common Cause Georgia, a voting rights group. In the primary, she noted, “we saw people in line for over six hours. Just imagine if we were losing 108 hours of early voting time, of Sunday voting, access to the drop box, how many of those people are now going to have to wait in line?”Isabella Grullón Paz contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAfter El Salvador Election, Bukele Is on Verge of Near-Total ControlThe party of President Nayib Bukele is set to take a sweeping majority in El Salvador’s Congress, giving the populist leader broad new powers.President Nayib Bukele at a news conference Sunday.Credit…Stanley Estrada/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMarch 1, 2021, 6:13 p.m. ETMEXICO CITY — El Salvador’s populist president was poised on Monday to claim a resounding victory in the country’s legislative elections, dealing a crushing blow to establishment parties and granting the young leader, who has been accused of authoritarian tendencies, a powerful new mandate.When President Nayib Bukele, 39, swept to power in 2019, he vowed to overhaul Salvadoran politics. In Sunday’s elections, he appeared to do just that.Mr. Bukele’s party, Nuevas Ideas — New Ideas — perhaps with the help of a political ally, appeared on track to achieve a supermajority in the Legislative Assembly: 56 of 84 seats.“Let’s think about what we have achieved,” Mr. Bukele told his supporters on Twitter early Monday. “We are writing the history of our country.”The vote cements Mr. Bukele’s hold on El Salvador’s politics and endows his party with sweeping powers to replace his staunchest adversaries, including the attorney general, and appoint new members to the Supreme Court. And with Congress and the judiciary stacked with allies, Mr. Bukele could change the Constitution and possibly transform the government in his image.“There’s no checks on his power,” said David Holiday, regional manager for Central America at the Open Society Foundation. “The people have given him a kind of blank check to kind of rebuild El Salvador in the way that he sees fit.”The strong showing for Nuevas Ideas came despite allegations of voting fraud from Mr. Bukele and other party members.In a move that could have come straight from the playbook of former President Donald J. Trump, to whom Mr. Bukele has been compared, the Salvadoran president called a news conference Sunday, as voting was going on, to claim irregularities in the vote and attack the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the news media and the attorney general.The president complained that polling centers had opened late and that his party had been denied credentials to observe the vote. He also claimed that some people had been illegally prohibited from casting a ballot, without offering any evidence.At the news conference, Mr. Bukele encouraged voters to cast their ballots for Nuevas Ideas, appearing to ignore Salvadoran election law, which prohibits campaigning in the three days before polling.The country’s Electoral Tribunal said it would open an investigation into Mr. Bukele’s comments. It did acknowledge lapses in awarding credentials to officials from the president’s party, but it said the local authorities were free to allow them into voting stations.On Sunday, the top American diplomat in El Salvador warned against making baseless claims of irregularities in the electoral process.“It is very important not to say that there is fraud where there is no fraud,” Brendan O’Brien, the acting head of the United States Embassy in San Salvador, said in an interview with Salvadoran media. “It is important to wait for the results.”The comments from Mr. O’Brien, who took up his charge the day of Mr. Biden’s inauguration, may presage a tense relationship with the new administration in Washington. Veering from the approach taken by its predecessor toward authoritarian-leaning governments, the Biden administration might try to exert its considerable influence to curb Mr. Bukele’s tendencies.“I expect them to be very tough,” said Mr. Holiday of the Open Society Foundation. He added that he expected the Biden administration to work on elevating civil society voices and “legitimating actors that the government itself doesn’t want to legitimate.”For voters in El Salvador, Mr. Bukele’s frequent flirtations with autocracy appeared to matter little: In the end, the president’s promise of a brighter future for the country coupled with a slick communication strategy prevailed.“I voted for Nuevas Ideas because from the get-go I saw Bukele work, that promises are kept,” said Domingo Pineda, 29, a merchant in Santa Tecla, a municipality just outside the capital, San Salvador. “This is a government that is working for the people, by the people.”Oscar Lopez reported from Mexico City. Natalie Kitroeff contributed reporting from Mexico City and Nelson Rentería Meza contributed from Santa Tecla, El Salvador.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyVoter Suppression Is Grand LarcenyWe are watching another theft of power.Opinion ColumnistFeb. 28, 2021, 7:20 p.m. ETCredit…Charles Krupa/Associated PressIn 1890, Mississippi became one of the first states in the country to call a constitutional convention for the express purpose of writing white supremacy into the DNA of the state.At the time, a majority of the registered voters in the state were Black men.The lone Black delegate to the convention, Isaiah Montgomery, participated in openly suppressing the voting eligibility of most of those Black men, in the hope that this would reduce the terror, intimidation and hostility that white supremacists aimed at Black people.The committee on which he sat went even further. As he said at the convention:“As a further precaution to secure unquestioned white supremacy the committee have fixed an arbitrary appointment of the state, which fixes the legislative branch of the government at 130 members and the senatorial branch at 45 members.” The majority of the seats in both branches were “from white constituencies.”Speaking to the Black people he was disenfranchising, Montgomery said:“I wish to tell them that the sacrifice has been made to restore confidence, the great missing link between the two races, to restore honesty and purity to the ballot-box and to confer the great boon of political liberty upon the Commonwealth of Mississippi.”That sacrifice backfired horribly, as states across the South followed the Mississippi example, suppressing the Black vote, and Jim Crow reigned.That same sort of language is being used today to prevent people from voting, because when it comes to voter suppression, ignoble intentions are always draped in noble language. Those who seek to impede others from voting, in some cases to strip them of the right, often say that they are doing so to ensure the sanctity, integrity or purity of the vote.However, when the truth is laid bare, the defilement against which they rail is the voting power of the racial minority, the young — in their eyes, naïve and liberally indoctrinated — and the dyed-in-the-wool Democrats.In early February, a Brennan Center for Justice report detailed:“Thus far this year, thirty-three states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 165 bills to restrict voting access. These proposals primarily seek to: (1) limit mail voting access; (2) impose stricter voter ID requirements; (3) slash voter registration opportunities; and (4) enable more aggressive voter roll purges. These bills are an unmistakable response to the unfounded and dangerous lies about fraud that followed the 2020 election.”On Feb. 24, the center updated its account to reveal that “as of February 19, 2021, state lawmakers have carried over, prefiled, or introduced 253 bills with provisions that restrict voting access in 43 states.”But it is the coded language that harkens to the post-Reconstruction era racism that strikes me.In Georgia, which went for a Democrat for the first time since Bill Clinton in 1992 and just elected two Democratic senators — one Black and one Jewish — there have been a raft of proposed voter restrictions. As State Representative Barry Fleming, a Republican and chair of the newly formed Special Committee on Election Integrity, put it recently, according to The Washington Post, “Our due diligence in this legislature [is] to constantly update our laws to try to protect the sanctity of the vote.”Kelly Loeffler, who lost her Senate bid in the state, has launched a voter organization because, as she said, “for too many in our state, the importance — and even the sanctity of their vote — is in question.” She continued, “That’s why we’re rolling up our sleeves to register conservative-leaning voters who have been overlooked, to regularly engage more communities, and to strengthen election integrity across our state.”Senator Rick Scott and other Republicans on Feb. 25 introduced the Save Democracy Act in what they said was an effort to “restore confidence in our elections.”Jessica Anderson of the conservative lobbying organization Heritage Action for America said of the legislation: “I applaud Senator Scott for putting forward common-sense, targeted reforms to help protect the integrity of our federal elections and the sanctity of the vote. The Save Democracy Act will protect against fraud and restore American’s confidence in our election systems while respecting the state’s sovereignty.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is pushing a slate of restrictive voter laws that would make it harder for Democrats to win in the state. On his website, the announcement read this way: “Today, Governor Ron DeSantis proposed new measures to safeguard the sanctity of Florida elections. The Governor’s announcement reaffirms his commitment to the integrity of every vote and the importance of transparency in Florida elections.”They can use all manner of euphemism to make it sound honorable, but it is not. This is an electoral fleecing in plain sight, one targeting people of color. We are watching another of history’s racist robberies. It’s grand larceny and, as usual, what is being stolen is power.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNayib Bukele, combativo pero popular, podría acrecentar su poder en las legislativasSe espera que el presidente de El Salvador, que ha generado críticas en el extranjero por su exhibición de fuerza, amplíe su mandato en las elecciones de hoy que podrían entregarle a su partido una victoria decisiva.El presidente Nayib Bukele de El Salvador, a la derecha, en una ceremonia militar en San Salvador, la capital.Credit…Rodrigo Sura/EPA, vía Shutterstock28 de febrero de 2021 a las 09:00 ETRead in EnglishCIUDAD DE MÉXICO — En sus primeros dos años en el cargo, el presidente de El Salvador envió soldados al recinto legislativo de su país, desafió las órdenes de la Corte Suprema, publicó fotos de pandilleros semidesnudos y apretujados en el suelo de una prisión y desplegó al ejército para detener a quienes violaran la cuarentena.Los salvadoreños lo adoran. Se espera que Nayib Bukele, que goza de una tasa de aprobación de alrededor del 90 por ciento en las encuestas, extienda más sus facultades en las elecciones legislativas del domingo, que podrían entregarle una victoria decisiva a su partido.La votación también podrían dotar a Bukele de amplios poderes adicionales: el control de una legislatura hasta ahora dominada por la oposición, así como la oportunidad de cambiar la Constitución y, posiblemente, replantear el gobierno a imagen suya. Si el partido y sus aliados ganan dos terceras partes de las curules, pueden reemplazar al fiscal general y nombrar nuevos jueces en la Corte Suprema.Seguidores del partido de Bukele en San Salvador durante un mítin. Su popularidad ha crecido. Credit…Jose Cabezas/ReutersEn una entrevista, el vicepresidente de Bukele, Félix Ulloa, reconoció que algunas de las acciones del presidente han sido cuestionables.“El presidente ha tenido algunos exabruptos”, concedió Ulloa, “pero que pueden entenderse como tales, como exabruptos, como errores y no como una tendencia, como una actitud, como el nacimiento de una nueva dictadura”.La tendencia de Bukele hacia la confrontación será atemperada, dijo Ulloa, cuando cuente con una legislatura que no esté decidida a bloquear su agenda. Invitó al mundo a medir al presidente según cómo gobierne tras las elecciones.“Vamos a poder evaluar cuál es el verdadero carácter de este gobierno, sea un gobierno democrático y que estaba en función de los intereses del pueblo salvadoreño”, dijo Ulloa. “Si, por el contrario, lo que se ha estado denunciando de que el presidente es autoritario, que quiere concentrar todo el poder y que quiere imponer un modelo antidemocrático, pues también va a salir a la luz”.En parte, lo que llama la atención de Bukele es su enfoque, que solo puede describirse como extremadamente online. El presidente, que tiene 39 años y se ha presentado como un outsider, deleita a sus seguidores al trolear a sus enemigos en Twitter y disfrutar de sus triunfos en TikTok. Emplea las redes sociales para criticar a la prensa de El Salvador, atacar al fiscal general y declarar su renuencia a atenerse a las órdenes de la Corte Suprema.Y a pesar de que Bukele ha ayudado a El Salvador a controlar la propagación del coronavirus mejor que muchos de sus vecinos, también ha suscitado condena internacional por parte de grupos de derechos humanos debido a sus desplantes de hombre fuerte y las medidas represoras que ha implementado durante la pandemia.El año pasado, envió soldados al recinto legislativo a intentar presionar a los congresistas para que aprobaran un préstamo destinado a financiar a los cuerpos de seguridad. (El vicepresidente Ulloa dijo que eso había sido “un error”).Soldados en el recinto de la Asamblea Legislativa en febrero pasadoCredit…Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBukele también empleó a la policía y soldados para detener a quienes rompieran la cuarentena en los llamados centros de contención, y luego desestimó varias órdenes de la Corte Suprema para dar marcha atrás a esa medida. Y ha generado amplias críticas por publicar fotos de reos apiñados en ropa interior.Los críticos temen que, si gana control irrestricto del país tras las elecciones del domingo, se limitará aún menos.“El temor es que concentre los poderes del estado. No habrá independencia judicial o legislativa verdadera y no habrá forma de limitar su poder”, dijo Mari Carmen Aponte, embajadora de Estados Unidos en El Salvador durante la gestión de Obama.La relación de Bukele con la gestión de Biden no comenzó con el pie derecho. En febrero, la Associated Press reportó que el presidente de El Salvador había volado a Washington y pedido reunirse con integrantes del nuevo gobierno pero fue desairado.El incómodo episodio dejó en evidencia el desafío que la victoria de Biden supone para líderes como Bukele.Con el gobierno de Trump, el manejo de la relación con Estados Unidos era claro: mientras Bukele y sus colegas en Centroamérica hicieran valer la agenda migratoria de Trump, podían esperar poca interferencia por parte de su vecino del norte cuando llevaran a cabo acciones más atrevidas en el ámbito nacional.Juan Gonzalez, a la derecha, el principal asesor del presidente Biden en asuntos de América Latina, durante una reunión virtual en la Casa Blanca.Credit…Pete Marovich para The New York TimesLos nuevos ocupantes de la Casa Blanca han enviado un mensaje muy distinto. Días después de la toma de mando de Biden, el máximo asesor del presidente en cuestiones de América Latina, Juan Gonzalez, ofreció una evaluación franca en una entrevista con El Faro.“Tendremos nuestras diferencias con el Gobierno de Bukele”, dijo Gonzalez. “Nuestras preocupaciones las manifestaremos en un contexto de respeto y de buena voluntad”La preocupación en torno a Bukele se ha hecho sentir en Washington al quedar claro el buen desempeño que podría tener su partido en las elecciones del domingo.“He aquí un tipo que no ha respetado las normas democráticas básicas y le das poder sin contrapesos”, dijo en una entrevista Dan Restrepo, exasesor de Obama. “El poder sin contrapesos casi nunca acaba bien en la región y la inestabilidad solo puede aumentar la presión migratoria, lo que no le conviene a nadie”.Para los salvadoreños, acostumbrados a generaciones de líderes políticos que hacían falsas promesas democráticas mientras se enriquecían a costa del erario público, las transgresiones de Bukele no parecen importar demasiado.El presidente ha evitado una inundación de casos de coronavirus en los hospitales y ha repartido ayudas en efectivo a los salvadoreños pobres para aliviar las penurias de la crisis económica provocada por la pandemia. Y aunque los medios locales han informado que la dramática caída en homicidios bajo el gobierno de Bukele ha sido consecuencia de un pacto con las pandillas, muchos salvadoreños simplemente están felices de tener un respiro de la violencia.Una conmemoración en San Salvador por las víctimas de la COVID-19Credit…Yuri Cortez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Puede escribirse de los peligros de Bukele, pero la razón por la que eso no tiene eco en la población es que dicen ‘¿Y eso cómo me da de comer? ¿Cómo disminuye la criminalidad?”, dijo Tim Muth, que ha sido observador electoral en El Salvador y tiene un blog sobre la política del país.“Al final, el pueblo salvadoreño puede decidir que está bien”, agregó, “porque él les está cumpliendo ciertas cosas”.En Chalatenango, un pequeño pueblo al norte de la capital, los simpatizante de Bukele estaban entusiasmados ante la posibilidad de que el presidente consolidara su poder y el declive de los partidos políticos que gobernaron el país durante décadas.“La gente se despertó y se dio cuenta de lo que había estado viviendo en todos estos años. Ya no más. Queremos cambio”, dijo Armando Gil, un vendedor de autos de 59 años.Gil había sido toda la vida partidario del izquierdista Frente de Liberación Nacional Farabundo Martí, pero quedó inconforme tras los repetidos escándalos de corrupción de “gente que nos engañó”.Votó por Bukele en 2019 y cree que los opositores del presidente están frustrados porque no lo pueden controlar.“No está trabajando para la pequeña minoría que siempre ha manejado y dominado nuestro país”, dijo Gil. “Eso es lo que no les gusta”.Nelson Rentería Meza colaboró con reportería desde Chalatenango, El Salvador.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySalvador’s Leader, Combative but Popular, May Tighten Grip in ElectionsNayib Bukele, who has drawn criticism abroad for his strongman displays, is expected to expand his mandate in legislative elections that could deliver his party a decisive victory.President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, right, at a military ceremony in San Salvador, the capital.Credit…Rodrigo Sura/EPA, via ShutterstockFeb. 28, 2021, 8:00 a.m. ETLeer en españolMEXICO CITY — In his first two years in office, El Salvador’s president marched soldiers into the country’s legislature, defied Supreme Court rulings, published photos of barely clothed gang members crammed together on a prison floor, and dispatched the military to detain anyone breaking quarantine.Salvadorans can’t get enough of him. President Nayib Bukele, who enjoys an approval rating around 90 percent in polls, is expected to expand his mandate even further in legislative elections on Sunday that could deliver a decisive victory to his party.The vote could also endow Mr. Bukele with sweeping new powers: control over a legislature that has been dominated by the opposition, along with the chance to begin changing the Constitution and, possibly, to remake the government in his image. If his party and its allies win two-thirds of the seats, they can replace the attorney general and appoint new Supreme Court justices.Supporters of Mr. Bukele’s party during a rally in San Salvador. His popularity has soared.Credit…Jose Cabezas/ReutersIn an interview, Mr. Bukele’s vice president, Felix Ulloa, acknowledged that some of the president’s actions have been questionable.“The president has had some outbursts,” Mr. Ulloa conceded, “but they should be understood as such, as outbursts, as errors, and not as a trend, as an attitude, as the birth of a new dictatorship.”Mr. Bukele’s tendency toward confrontation will be tempered, Mr. Ulloa said, once he has a legislature that isn’t determined to block his agenda. He invited the world to take measure of the president based on how he governs after the election.“We will be able to evaluate the true character of this government, whether it’s a democratic government serving the interests of the Salvadoran people,” Mr. Ulloa said. “If, on the contrary, it turns out that the president is, as has been claimed, an authoritarian who wants to concentrate power and impose an antidemocratic model, then that will also come to light.”Part of what has drawn attention to Mr. Bukele is his approach, which can only be described as very online. A 39-year-old self-styled political outsider, the president delights followers by trolling his enemies on Twitter and reveling in his triumphs on TikTok. He uses social media to trash El Salvador’s press, attack the attorney general and declare his refusal to abide by Supreme Court rulings.And while Mr. Bukele has helped El Salvador control the spread of the coronavirus better than many of its neighbors, he has drawn international condemnation from human rights groups for his strongman displays and the repressive measures taken during the pandemic.Last year, he sent soldiers into the legislature to try to pressure lawmakers to approve a loan to finance law enforcement. (Vice President Ulloa called the deployment “an error.”)Soldiers inside the legislative assembly in San Salvador in February last year.Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Bukele also dispatched soldiers and the police to detain people breaking quarantine in so-called containment centers — then ignored several Supreme Court orders to halt the practice. And he has drawn widespread criticism for posting photos of prisoners huddled together in their underwear.Critics worry that if he gains unfettered control over the country after Sunday’s election, he’ll show even less restraint.“The fear is that he will concentrate the powers of the state. There won’t be real judicial or legislative independence, and there won’t be a way of limiting his power” said Mari Carmen Aponte, an ambassador to El Salvador in the Obama administration. Mr. Bukele’s relationship with the Biden administration did not get off to a smooth start. The Associated Press reported in February that the Salvadoran president flew to Washington and asked to meet with members of the administration, but was rebuffed.The awkward episode highlighted the test that Mr. Biden’s victory has posed for leaders like Mr. Bukele.Under the Trump administration, managing relations with the United States was straightforward: As long as Mr. Bukele and his counterparts in Central America enforced Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, they could expect little interference from their northern neighbor when they made provocative moves at home.Juan Gonzalez, right, President Biden’s top adviser on Latin America, during a virtual meeting at the White House.Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York TimesThe White House’s new occupants have sent a far different message. Days after the inauguration, Juan Gonzalez, Biden’s top adviser on Latin America, offered a blunt assessment in an interview with El Faro, a Salvadoran news site.“We are going to have our differences with Bukele’s government,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “And we’re going to voice worries in a respectful and well-meaning manner.”Apprehension over Mr. Bukele has reverberated in Washington as it has become clear just how well his party could perform in Sunday’s elections.“Here’s a guy who hasn’t observed basic democratic norms, and you hand him unchecked power,” the former Obama adviser Dan Restrepo said in an interview. “Unchecked power seldom ends well in the region, and instability can only increase migratory pressure, which is in no one’s interest.”For Salvadorans accustomed to generations of political leaders who paid lip service to democracy while enriching themselves from the public till, Mr. Bukele’s transgressions don’t seem to matter much.The president has avoided an overflow of coronavirus cases in hospitals and has handed out cash to poor Salvadorans to blunt the pain of the economic crisis. And while local news media reported that a sharp plunge in murders under Mr. Bukele resulted from a government deal with criminal gangs, many Salvadorans are just happy to have a respite from violence.A remembrance day in San Salvador last fall for those who died of Covid-19.Credit…Yuri Cortez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“People may write about the dangers of Bukele, but the reason it doesn’t resonate with people is that they say, ‘That feeds me how? That lowers the crime rate how?’” said Tim Muth, who has served as an election observer in El Salvador and writes a blog on the country’s politics.“The Salvadoran public ultimately may be deciding that it’s OK,” he added, “because this guy is delivering a certain set of things to us.”In Chalatenango, a small town north of the capital, Bukele’s supporters were giddy at the prospect of their president consolidating power and by the decline of the political parties that had ruled the country for decades.“The people woke up and realized what we had been living through all these years. No more. We want change,” said Armando Gil, 59, a car salesman.Mr. Gil had been a longtime supporter of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, but grew disgusted at repeated corruption scandals involving “people who cheated us.”He voted for Mr. Bukele in 2019 and believes the president’s opponents are frustrated that they can’t control him.“He isn’t working for the small minority that has always run and dominated our country,” Mr. Gil said. “That’s what they don’t like.”Nelson Renteria Meza contributed reporting from Chalatenango, El Salvador.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyArrest of Opposition Leader in Georgia Raises Fear of Growing InstabilityLawmakers from parties aligned against the government have vowed to continue a boycott of Parliament until Nika Melia is released from police custody.A protest on Tuesday in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, after the arrest of Nika Melia, an opposition leader.Credit…Vano Shlamov/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 24, 2021, 12:00 p.m. ETMOSCOW — Major opposition parties in the South Caucasus nation of Georgia vowed on Wednesday to boycott Parliament until the government releases a prominent opponent detained recently.The instability adds yet another country to a growing list of former Soviet republics gripped by political tensions, street protests or outright war.Just in the past few months, demonstrations have shaken the government in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan has endured its third post-Soviet revolution, and Azerbaijan and Armenia have fought a vicious war over a breakaway enclave.Though politics in Georgia, a country of just over four million people, have always been sharp-elbowed, the arrest of the opposition leader, Nika Melia, suggested an alarming pivot to more repressive policies by the governing party, Georgian Dream.Mr. Melia, chairman of the United National Movement, a political party founded by a former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, had blockaded himself into the party’s headquarters in Tbilisi, the capital. To make the arrest, police officers scaled fire ladders onto the roof and battered through barricades of furniture inside the building.Mr. Melia stands accused of fomenting a crowd to storm Parliament in 2019, a charge he has dismissed as politically motivated.In a joint statement issued on Tuesday, several United States senators sharply criticized the arrest, saying it “jeopardizes what remains of Georgia’s democracy and its Euro-Atlantic path.”Mr. Melia is the head of the United National Movement, a political party founded by a former president, Mikheil Saakashvili.Credit…Vano Shlamov/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe statement called for Mr. Melia’s release and for a dialogue between parties to resolve the political crisis that has been brewing since a contested election in October. Members of several opposition parties, including the United National Movement, contend that the vote was rigged and have refused to be seated in Parliament. They have vowed to continue the boycott until Mr. Melia is released.A member of the United National Movement, Zaal Udumashvili, told local news outlets, “We are ready to sit down at the negotiating table, provided that Nika Melia will also be sitting at the table.” Several thousand people protested Mr. Melia’s arrest in central Tbilisi on Tuesday evening.Underlying the political crisis are accusations from the opposition that a billionaire who went into politics, Bidzina Ivanishvili, a backer of the governing party, has destroyed the country’s pluralistic institutions, something Mr. Ivanishvili denies.Shota Utiashvili, vice president of the Atlantic Council of Georgia, said in a telephone interview, “Georgia has been labeled as a beacon of democracy in the region, and it’s really unfortunate to see it sliding toward these signs of authoritarianism.”“Georgia has never been a perfect democracy, but at least its trajectory was in the right direction,” he added.The arrest has also roiled Georgian Dream, the governing party. The prime minister, Giorgi Gakharia, a member of the party, resigned last week to protest the issuing of a warrant for Mr. Melia’s detention. “Polarization and confrontation pose the greatest risks to our country’s future,” he said.The escalating standoff over the disputed election has alarmed Western diplomats who for years have held up Georgia as a democratic success story in the former Soviet Union.The State Department issued a statement last week saying it was “deeply concerned” about the political parties’ inability to resolve the election dispute. The United States, it said, called “on all parties to exercise restraint and avoid any actions or rhetoric that could escalate tensions or result in violence.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyDid a Coup Attempt Really Happen Two Weeks Ago in Haiti?The Biden administration must speak up for human rights in the island nation.Ms. Stockman is a member of the editorial board.Feb. 23, 2021A copy of the Haitian Constitution wrapped in an American flag at a march in Port-au-Prince on Feb. 10. The Haitian president’s supporters and opponents disagree on when his term ends.Credit…Valerie Baeriswyl/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCatherine Buteau, a 33-year-old marketing and communications specialist in Montreal, woke up on Feb. 7 to a lot of missed calls on her phone. Her relatives in Haiti had been desperately calling her. Her father, mother and aunt had been snatched from their beds in Port-au-Prince in the middle of the night.“No one knew what was happening, just that they were taken,” she told me. “In the beginning, not understanding what’s happening, I thought the worst.”Later that day, Ms. Buteau learned that her parents and her aunt were among the eighteen people who had been arrested and accused of attempting a coup against Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse. Since that day, she’s been working around the clock with a lawyer in Haiti to try to get her parents out of prison.Were they plotting a coup or trying to restore democracy?Jake Johnston, a Haiti specialist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told me that the answer depends on when you think the president’s term is up. Opposition leaders say it ended on Feb. 7, four years after his inauguration in 2017. They were openly planning to swear in a parallel government to force him to relinquish power. But supporters of Mr. Moïse say he has another year left in his term, because a disputed election delayed him from taking office.“That’s what so much of this comes down to: legitimacy,” Mr. Johnston said.Some coups are obvious, like the recent military takeover in Myanmar. Others are murkier. What constitutes a coup d’état is all too often in the eye of the beholder.Coups are getting rarer, according to John Chin, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who tracks illegal power grabs. The 1960s saw dozens of coups around the world each year. More recently, there’s been only one or two a year. But accusations of coup plots have not gone away. Indeed, even the leaders of democracies — like Donald Trump in the United States and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel — have cried coup to delegitimize opponents by portraying their conduct as illegal and undemocratic, Mr. Chin told me.The question of whether something is deemed a coup has practical implications. In 2009, when Honduran special forces escorted President Manuel Zelaya from his house in his pajamas at gunpoint and onto an airplane flight out of the country, the U.S. State Department refrained from calling it a “military coup,” because doing so would have meant cutting off aid to the Honduran military.And, in 2019, when Bolivia’s president Evo Morales, an icon of the left, was forced to flee to Mexico just weeks after he was declared the winner of a fourth term in office, U.S. officials rejected the term “coup” and called it an expression of “democratic will.”If a government is unpopular enough, its overthrow is called a revolution. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Haiti, a nation founded when enslaved and free people revolted against their French colonial masters, winning independence in 1804. Few historians would call that a coup.But popular revolts are easier to produce than popular governments. Haiti has endured a number of brutal dictators, notably François Duvalier, known as “Papa Doc,” in the 1950s and ’60s and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, “Baby Doc,” who ruled from 1971 to 1986. There were lots of plots to take out Papa Doc, who survived by relying on a dreaded militia, the Tontons Macoute. Haiti is an example of how failed coups, or even purported failed coups, can strengthen a leader’s hold on power by giving a pretext to crack down on opponents.Haiti didn’t have its first free democratic election until 1990, when Jean-Bertrand Aristide won in a landslide, only to be deposed twice in military coups. Once a country catches a case of the coups, it can be hard to cure. Every leader afterward is less secure.Ms. Buteau’s parents don’t seem like the coup-plotting type. They weren’t soldiers. Her father, Louis Buteau, is an agronomist who worked for years in Haiti’s Ministry of Agriculture. Her mother, Dr. Marie Antoinette Gautier, is a well-known surgeon at Hôpital Eliazar Germain who once opened a clinic inside their house for people in their neighborhood. Dr. Gautier also ran for president in 2015 as a long-shot candidate.“My mother, she is very vocal,” Ms. Buteau told me. Raised by a widowed nurse with seven children, Dr. Gautier went into medicine, while her sister, Marie Louise Gauthier, joined the national police.“These are people who have dedicated their lives to public service in Haiti,” Ms. Buteau said.Images from a petition to free Dr. Marie Antoinette Gautier, left, Marie Louise Gauthier and Louis Buteau.They sounded like the kind of educated and civic-minded Haitians who might throw up their hands at the political situation and emigrate to the United States or France or Canada. But Ms. Buteau’s parents didn’t want to leave Haiti.They stayed even when, a few years ago, Mr. Buteau was shot by robbers outside a bank, and then a wave of kidnappings washed over the country, snapping up a distant cousin for ransom. Still, the last time Ms. Buteau talked to her parents, they were on edge because of the deteriorating political situation. The last year has been marked by increasing protests against the president, who has ruled by decree since he dissolved Parliament in January 2020.Whatever legitimacy Mr. Moïse enjoys stems from his 2016 election. But political legitimacy gets murky when large numbers of people have been kicked off the voter rolls and when elections have a reputation for being rigged.Only about 20 percent of Haitians turned out in the election that brought Mr. Moïse to power. Merely holding elections isn’t enough — the public must perceive the vote to be free and fair for the winner to carry moral force. That’s a warning for the United States, where Republicans are busy trying to toss people off the voter rolls, and where some Democrats feel it’s futile to try to convince Trump supporters that President Biden won fairly.The question of when the president’s term ends should have been answered by a constitutional court. But the justice system in Haiti isn’t functioning as it should, thanks to the president. So Mr. Moïse has been planning another year in office, even rolling out plans for a nakedly unconstitutional referendum in April that would strengthen his grip on power. While a consensus has formed in Haiti that some political reforms are necessary to prevent cyclical deadlock, the current Constitution specifically forbids amendments by referendum.After the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, Americans no longer have much credibility to lecture other countries about elections, if we ever had it to begin with. In the past, Americans overtly meddled in Haiti’s politics, in ways that didn’t produce good long-term results. It isn’t our place to resolve the crisis in Haiti.Nor should U.S. tax dollars pay for Mr. Moïse’s unconstitutional referendum. And Haiti’s leaders should not be allowed to park their money in U.S. banks if there is reason to believe it was pilfered in corrupt schemes or garnered through kidnapping rings involving state security forces. That’s what the Magnitsky Act is for.Many people in Haiti believe that the Trump administration made a deal with Mr. Moïse: If he supported the U.S. case against Venezuela, then Washington would look the other way when it came to human rights abuses in Haiti. But things have gotten so bad there that even the Trump administration couldn’t stay silent. In December, the Treasury Department issued sanctions on two former officials in Mr. Moïse’s government and a notorious gang leader for their alleged role in a 2018 massacre in which at least 71 Haitians were killed, reportedly for refusing to side with the president against the opposition.More must be done to hold those who committed atrocities accountable. It’s hard to imagine free and fair elections in Haiti as long as such killers walk free. Still, the State Department initially supported Mr. Moïse’s view that he has another year in office, a declaration that some feel gave him the confidence to arrest Ms. Buteau’s relatives, although a spokesman also called on him to adhere to the spirit of the Constitution. Other voices inside the U.S. government have spoken up forcefully about the situation in Haiti.Mr. Moïse’s government put out a videotape showing “proof” of a coup, which featured a recording of a conversation between Ms. Buteau’s aunt, the national police’s inspector general, and the head of security at the presidential palace. The government says the tapes prove that Ms. Buteau’s aunt tried to bribe the security chief into arresting Mr. Moïse so that a new provisional president — a Supreme Court judge who was also arrested — could be sworn in.Was this really proof of a coup? Not likely. The video named the coup’s mastermind as Dan Whitman, an American who served as the U.S. Embassy spokesman in Haiti 20 years ago. Reached at his home in Washington, Mr. Whitman told me the allegation “couldn’t be more bizarre and more untrue.”Mr. Whitman, who retired from the State Department in 2009, told me he hasn’t been to Haiti in two decades. He had lost track of what was happening there until a Haitian radio journalist called him to ask for a comment about the purported plot. He has since heard a rumor that someone impersonating him has been calling up opposition figures in Haiti and giving orders that paved the way for the Feb. 7 arrests.“I’m disgusted,” he told me. “I’m creeped out. But I’m not surprised. This kind of thing happens all the time in small, vulnerable countries.”The Biden administration must find ways to speak up for fair elections in Haiti without trying to decide the outcome. In a draft of letter to Congress, Frantz G. Verret, former president of Haiti’s electoral commission, asked for help convening a meeting between the opposition and the president. He likened it to “roadside assistance” to get Haiti’s democracy moving again.That’s the sort of help that would be proper for the United States to provide. After all, it is the people of Haiti who must decide if their president is legitimate or not, and if the foiled coup in Haiti was really a coup at all.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
