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In El Salvador's recent elections on February 4, President Nayib Bukele, accused of rigging the system and suppressing opposition, faced technical issues as the platform for uploading preliminary results crashed. A recount revealed allegations of fraud, casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election. Bukele's prior actions, including unconstitutional reelection bids, authoritarianism, and reforms favoring his party, had already raised concerns about free and fair elections. The State of Exception, ongoing since March 2022, has led to mass arrests, repression of opposition, and control over public institutions. Despite concerns about the election process, Bukele's party, New Ideas (NI), secured a supermajority in the legislature. The results have sparked calls for the elections to be reconvened amid doubts about democratic conditions and the integrity of the electoral process. The opposition, including the Popular Rebellion and Resistance Bloc, has rejected the results, and claims have been submitted to annul the election. The discrepancy between Bukele's popularity and that of his legislators suggests skepticism among Salvadoran voters about one-party rule and raises questions about the true extent of Bukele's support.

News Article

Five years after he was lavished with praise by Donald Trump for “stopping drugs at a level that has never happened” – and two years after he was extradited in shackles to the US – the former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández is to stand trial in New York on Monday, accused of overseeing a “narco-state” and accepting millions in bribes from drug traffickers, including the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

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National and international organizations demand that Honduran authorities respect the decision of the people of Tocoa to say NO to the petroleum coke thermoelectric plant and Emco's mining megaproject, among other demands. On Saturday, December 9, 2023, the people of Tocoa were called by the Municipal Corporation to participate in an open town meeting regarding the Ecotek petroleum coke thermoelectric project, one of the seven components of an iron oxide megaproject promoted by the "Emco Holdings" consortium of Ana Facusse and Lenir Perez. 

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The water defenders' arrest signals both a crackdown on civil society under President Nayib Bukele and a signal that Bukele may seek to resume metal mining operations.

Washington, D.C. and San Salvador – On February 15, 245 international organizations from 31 countries delivered a petition demanding that the Salvadoran  Attorney General drop the politically-motivated charges against five prominent Water Defenders arrested on January 11, 2023.

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El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele was re-elected for a second term in a landslide win. Bukele has overseen a vast and brutal crackdown on gangs, transforming the nation from one of the deadliest to one of the safest in Latin America. But that peace has come at a cost with thousands of innocent people jailed. Amna Nawaz and producer Teresa Cebrian Aranda visited the country for this report.

News Article

A summary of each fraudulent election; the warning signs; words from U.S. prosecutors about the significance of each election in entrenching the narco-state; and the post-electoral responses from the U.S. and Canadian governments in 2009, 2013 and 2017.

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