El Salvador President Nayib Bukele Threatens Price Gougers with Anti-Gang-Style Crackdown

After going after gangs, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced he is going after price gougers next. During a speech on Friday, he threatened to use his infamously heavy-handed anti-gang crackdown tactics to go after them.

Bukele's tactics in going after El Salvador's dangerous and infamous street gangs, such as MS-13 and Barrio-18, are notoriously harsh, with arrests being made without warrants and human rights experts already decrying his actions in the treatment of suspected gang members, both actual gangers and those suspected of being gangers but were arrested because they fall on a certain demographic of young men from a poor community, usually with tattoos.

In his speech, the president blamed a recent steep rise in the prices for food items and other basic goods on these price gougers and vowed that they would be subjected to the same treatment as members of the country's most infamous gangs.

"I am going to issue a call, like we did to the gangs at the start of 2019," he stated during his speech. "We told them either stop killing people or don't complain about what happens afterward."

"Well, I'm going to issue a message to the importers, distributors, and food wholesalers: stop abusing the people of El Salvador, or don't complain about what happens afterward," he added before warning that "we are not playing around" and his threats were not a smokescreen.

He then stated that he wants the prices to go down by tomorrow "or there are going to be problems." He may actually do this because of the emergency powers granted to him by the country's massively pro-Bukele Congress.

El Salvador President Launches Zero Leisure Plan to Put Inmates to Work

As for the gang members who have been rounded up en masse in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele says he is planning to put them to work with his new project called "Zero Leisure," which aims to have these prisoners support themselves.

According to MSN, the prisoners must work to support themselves, such as growing crops, raising animals, or working in bakeries. Bukele claims that these activities save the state money, which no longer has to pay for the upkeep of prisoners. It would also rehabilitate them in theory, as well as teach them skills that can help them find a job after release.

El Salvador's LGBTQ Community in a 'Vulnerable Situation' Due to Nayib Bukele Policies

Meanwhile, Bukele, who promised solidarity with the LGBTQ community in El Salvador, may also be the one responsible for additional discrimination against them, according to the Tico Times. This is all due to the president embracing more conservative leanings.

Bukele recently dismissed 300 employees from the Ministry of Culture for promoting "agendas" incompatible with his government's vision, which has been described as a defense of "the traditional family," "faith," and "life."

The ministry also canceled a presentation of an LGBT play at the National Theater. This left the country's LGBTQ citizens in a vulnerable situation."

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Rick Martin

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