El Salvador’s ‘Cool Dictator’ Says He’s Won Re-Election

Nayib Bukele, the millennial authoritarian president of El Salvador, said he had been re-elected to a second term in a widely expected victory on Sunday.

The official votes are still being counted—but the apparent landslide win by the self-styled “world’s coolest dictator” comes despite the country’s constitutional ban on consecutive terms, as well as international criticism that his administration’s crackdown on crime has allowed a human rights crisis to spiral under his watch.

Bukele and his New Ideas party claimed victory on Sunday, before official results were released.

“According to our numbers,” the president tweeted in Spanish, “we have won the presidential election with more than 85 percent of the votes and a minimum of 58 of 60 deputies in the Assembly.”

He added that it was a new record “in the entire democratic history of the world,” and that he would give an address at 9 p.m. local time. “God bless El Salvador.”