MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguayan Senator praises Bukele's transformation of El Salvador

Sartori praised Bukele's “political will” whereby “positive transformations are possible”

Uruguayan Senator Juan Sartori of President Luis Lacalle Pou's National Party met this week with his Salvadorean President “friend” Nayib Bukele and said that the Central American country had “achieved a total change in security and openness to the world.”

“I met with my friend @nayibbukele and we exchanged ideas about our countries. El Salvador has achieved a total change in security and openness to the world. I have always liked to learn first-hand how problems have been solved in other contexts. A good case of how positive transformations are possible,” Sartori wrote on X on Thursday.

Me reuní con mi amigo @nayibbukele e intercambiamos ideas sobre nuestros países. El Salvador ha logrado un cambio total en seguridad y apertura al mundo. Siempre me ha gustado conocer de primera mano cómo se han resuelto problemas en otros contextos. Un buen caso de cómo las… pic.twitter.com/3AMymPIFjW

— Juan Sartori (@JuanSartoriUY) February 15, 2024

Upon being reelected earlier this month, Bukele wrote that “not only have we won the presidency with more than 85% of the vote, but we have won the Legislative Assembly with 58 out of 60 deputies, at least.” He added that “the opposition was pulverized.”

The Uruguayan lawmaker praised Bukele's “political will” whereby “positive transformations are possible.”

According to Montevideo's El Observador, the meeting between Sartori and Bukele was held to exchange ideas and visualize how “problems have been solved in other contexts” while creating regulatory frameworks to attract new industries.

“Seeing how problems have been solved in other countries is something I do in every international trip and in every meeting I have with personalities from around the world. It is a commitment I have made from the beginning: to make Uruguay known and to understand experiences from abroad,” said Sartori.

“Today El Salvador is a case that shows how positive transformations are possible with political will and with young, pragmatic, and modern leaders. It has gone from being one of the most dangerous countries to one of the safest,” he added.

“Clearly the reality of El Salvador is different from that of Uruguay and the same solutions cannot be applied, but I think it is important to exchange on what tools were implemented for different problems,” Sartori insisted. He is yet to decide whether to run for the Executive Tower later this year. On Feb. 5, Alem García, president of the Comisión Administradora del Río de la Plata (CARP) and a leader of Sartori's faction within the party, his bid was highly likely.

Bukele has repeatedly defended the exception regime he imposed in March 2022 through which over 76,000 alleged gang members have been detained. ”They say that Salvadorans do not want the regime of exception, that they live in fear (...) The Salvadoran people spoke loud and clear and in the most forceful way,” Bukele said after the elections.

Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch denounce arbitrary arrests, torture, and deaths in prison. In their view, some 7,000 innocent people have been released but many others remain imprisoned.