El Salvador’s hardline president has threatened to jail store owners who sell basic food items at exorbitant prices.
President Najib Bukele, known for his tough crackdown on street gangs, has warned that he will use similar tactics against price gougers.
Since 2022, Bukele has rounded up tens of thousands of suspected street gang members with little evidence and filmed them being led away in their underwear to the vast new prison.
President Bukele, who once described himself as “the coolest dictator in the world,” blamed wholesalers and distributors for recent spikes in the prices of food and other basic goods in a speech late Friday and warned that he would use the same tactics against them.
“I’m going to call out to the gangs just like I did in the beginning of 2019,” Bukele said, referring to the year he was first elected. “We told the gangs to stop killing people or stop complaining about whatever happens after that.”
“So, we send a message to importers, distributors and food wholesalers: Stop mistreating the Salvadoran people, or don’t complain about what happens after.”
“We’re not messing around,” he said, and the threat wasn’t a smokescreen. “I expect prices to come down by tomorrow, or we’ll have problems,” he said.
Bukele, who was recently re-elected with 85 percent of the vote, has control of Congress and has been granted special emergency powers to fight gangs for more than two years.
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While President Bukele’s emergency powers probably don’t allow him to jail people for overcharging, he argued there was evidence that wholesalers and importers were involved in tax evasion, bribery and smuggling, and that these crimes merited prison time.
The Salvadoran government says inspectors have found prices of some goods tripled, and that while fines are possible, they would not be enough.
The government also announced plans to set up 20 sales points to distribute food at “fair prices”.
All of this is characteristic of Bukele, who once called himself “the coolest dictator in the world.”
Bukele has also become popular after launching a frontal attack on powerful gangs that once effectively controlled many areas and extorted protection money from businesses and residents.
The crackdown has transformed what was once the world’s murder capital into one of the safest countries in Latin America.
The state of emergency, first declared in 2022 and still in force, was intended to round up 78,175 suspects, but rights groups say many of the arrests were arbitrary, based on the suspects’ appearance or place of residence.
The government was forced to release about 7,000 people due to lack of evidence.