Nayib Bukele

Salvadoran politician and businessman who is the 43rd president of El Salvador, serving since 1 June 2019. He is the first president since José Napoleón Duarte (1984–1989) not to have been elected as the candidate of one of the country's two major political parties: the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA).

Bukele served as mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán for three years from 2012 to 2015, and then served three years as mayor of San Salvador, the nation's capital, from 2015 to 2018. After winning both mayoral elections as a member of the FMLN, in 2017 Bukele was expelled from the party. In 2018 he established his own political party: Nuevas Ideas (NI). He sought to run for president in the 2019 election with the center-left Democratic Change (CD); however, the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) dissolved the CD, forcing Bukele to instead run with the center-right Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA). He won the election with 53 percent of the vote.

El Salvador's murder rate decreased to historic lows during Bukele's tenure, falling by over 50 percent during his first year in office. Although Bukele attributed the decrease in murders to his deployment of thousands of police and soldiers to gang strongholds and an increase in prison security, his government has been accused by the United States of secretly negotiating with Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) to reduce the number of murders. Since March 2022, Bukele's government has arrested over 65,000 people with alleged gang affiliations following a significant spike in murders, leading to accusations of human rights violations being committed by El Salvador's security forces.

Bukele has maintained high approval ratings among Salvadorans throughout his tenure, but has been accused of governing in an authoritarian manner.