Conservative businessman Nayib Bukele took the oath of office Saturday as president of El Salvador.

Bukele was sworn in by the speaker of the National Assembly in a square in downtown San Salvador, as a large, boisterous crowd applauded and shouted “We did it!”

Bukele, 37, was elected in February to succeed Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a leftist former guerrilla who maintained close relations with his Nicaraguan and Venezuelan counterparts.

Bukele has said he will seek closer ties with the United States, home to 2.5 million Salvadorans.

“I will be the president of all Salvadorans,” said Bukele, who takes over a country saddled with poverty and rampant gang violence. Both problems are prompting many to flee north in hopes of reaching the US.

The United States was represented by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez who was born in San Salvador is the son of Olga Ortez de Bukele and Armando Bukele Kattán, a renowned businessman of Palestinian descent. At a very young age, Nayib was recognized for his skills and spirit of entrepreneurship. At just 18, he already ran a company. </s> SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - El Salvador’s new president, Nayib Bukele, took office on Saturday pledging to cure the Central American country that he described as a “sick child” following years of violence and migration that has strained relations with the United States.

New Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele speaks after receiving the presidential sash during a swearing-in ceremony in San Salvador, El Salvador June 1, 2019. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas

The 37-year-old former mayor of San Salvador, who won more votes than all other candidates in the February presidential election, brought an end to a two-party system that has held sway over the country for three decades.

“Our country is like a sick child, now it’s up to all of us to take care of it,” Bukele told the crowd. “We have to suffer a little now, we have to have a little pain, assume our responsibility and all as brothers to bring forward that child.”

Accompanied by his pregnant wife Gabriela Rodriguez, Bukele vowed to make bitter decisions for the impoverished and violence-plagued Central American country during his five year term. He did not give details.

His presidency breaks three decades of bipartisanship between the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the outgoing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

Bukele, who has been critical of Beijing in the past, must now balance the interests of China and the United States.

The Chinese embassy in El Salvador said in a statement on Twitter that Bukele had told a special envoy he considered China a friend and that there was “great potential” to work together.

El Salvador broke ties with Taiwan in August last year to establish relations with China, following the Dominican Republic and Panama in the region.

U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated Bukele on Saturday on Twitter, saying the United States was ready to work with him “to advance prosperity in El Salvador and the hemisphere.”

Trump has frequently threatened to cut aid to El Salvador - as well as neighboring Guatemala and Honduras - if they do not do more to curb migration to the United States.

The U.S. Department of Commerce said in a statement that the United States sent a delegation led by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to attend the ceremony.

While in El Salvador, the statement said, Ross met with Bukele and his Foreign Minister, Alexandra Hill, as well as with business leaders to discuss improving the investment climate and potential for economic growth.

Tensions over migration have been running high between the United States and its southern neighbor Mexico, with Trump threatening earlier this week to impose punitive tariffs on Mexican goods exported to the United States on June 10.

Mexican Economy Minister Graciela Marquez, who also attended the event in San Salvador, tweeted a picture of herself and Ross, saying they had spoken and would continue their dialogue next week in Washington.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez were not invited to the ceremony, since Bukele considers them “undemocratic” governments. </s> Conservative businessman Nayib Bukele took the oath of office Saturday as president of El Salvador.

Bukele was sworn in by the speaker of the National Assembly in a square in downtown San Salvador, as a large, boisterous crowd applauded and shouted “We did it!”

Bukele, 37, was elected in February to succeed Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a leftist former guerrilla who maintained close relations with his Nicaraguan and Venezuelan counterparts.

Bukele has said he will seek closer ties with the United States, home to 2.5 million Salvadorans.

“I will be the president of all Salvadorans,” said Bukele, who takes over a country saddled with poverty and rampant gang violence. Both problems are prompting many to flee north in hopes of reaching the US.

The United States was represented by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. </s> In the Central American country of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele has been sworn-in as the nation’s President.

Bukele was sworn-in by the Speaker of the National Assembly in downtown San Salvador. Delegations from 83 countries attended the ceremony.

Bukele said, he will seek closer ties with the United States, which is home to some 2.5 million Salvadorans. Bukele was elected in February to succeed Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a leftist former guerrilla. </s> The new president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, asked this Saturday during his inauguration speech for citizens to unite and assume their responsibilities in order to help cure the nation's ills.

After taking office as president of El Salvador for the 2019-2024 term in a ceremony at Capitan General Gerardo Barrios Plaza in the historic downtown area of San Salvador, the businessman gave his first speech as the new president of this Central American country before thousands of people gradually arriving at the site, including seven heads of state and at least 32 delegations from other countries. </s> Presidential candidate Nayib Bukele, of the Grand Alliance for National Unity, center, his wife Gabriela, right, and the Vice-president candidate Felix Ulloa wave supporters in San Salvador, El Salvador, Sunday, Feb. 3, 2019. Bukele, a youthful former mayor of the capital, easily won El Salvador's presidency, getting more votes than his three rivals combined to usher out the two parties that dominated politics for a quarter century in the crime-plagued Central America nation. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador's new president-elect won in resounding fashion, but breaking the three-decade hold on power of the country's two dominant parties means that Nayib Bukele will take office with few friends in congress.

The 37-year-old former mayor has an ambitious agenda, topped by a vow to root out corruption. To accomplish that and many other campaign promises, Bukele will have to find allies who can help.

Bukele won with more than 53 percent of the votes Sunday, topping three rivals. But GANA — the Grand Alliance for National Unity party that he carried to victory — has only 10 seats in the legislature, well short of the 43 votes needed to pass laws.

"This new government is going to be weak," said Alvaro Artiga, a professor of political science and sociology at the Jose Simeon Canas Central American University. "It's that institutionally it doesn't have legislative support."

The outgoing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, government had a difficult time of it as a minority presence in the Legislative Assembly, and it had 23 of the 84 seats.

And Bukele's promise to establish a commission to investigate official corruption modeled on a U.N.-backed effort in Guatemala is unlikely to win him friends among the FMLN or the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance, or ARENA. That party itself has 37 deputies and its allied parties have 12 more.

Bukele will need to send a message immediately through his cabinet picks that it won't be business as usual, and avoid cronyism, Artiga said. "It can't be the friends, the relatives, all that he has accused the usual suspects of," he said.

"He can't repeat that, because people voted as a rejection," Artiga said. Bukele will start his five-year term June 1.

El Salvador is small both in size and population, with just 6.5 million people. Close to a third of its households live in poverty, and Salvadorans searching for a better life have joined recent caravans of migrants trekking across Mexico hoping to reach the U.S.

Bukele rose quickly through the ranks of the FMLN, a former guerrilla army that transformed itself into a political party after a 1992 peace deal ended the nation's civil war. He first won election as a youthful small-town mayor and then became mayor of San Salvador, the capital. But his persistent criticisms of FMLN leadership got him expelled from the party. Joining GANA — which has been a right-leaning party — was a last-minute move just to get on the ballot.

"It was always about the size of the resentment among the urban middle class toward the country's elites," said political analyst and former guerrilla commander Salvador Samayoa. "It was never that he was the best, most honest, most wholesome, most capable candidate."

Voters were tied of corruption, the lack of economic opportunities and the persistent violence.

"I voted, everybody in my family voted for Bukele because we're tired of these ARENA and FMLN governments that steal money," said 42-year-old Manuel Lopez as he headed to work Monday. "Nobody believes them."

"Two presidents from ARENA, Paco Flores, Tony Saca and one from FMLN, Mauricio Funes, have stolen everything they could," he said. </s> ‘Our country is like a sick child, we all have to take care of it’: Nayib Bukele sworn in as president of El Salvador </s> SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - El Salvador’s maverick new president takes office on Saturday pledging to battle violence, poverty, corruption and mass migration to the United States - but will have to do all that without a congressional majority.

Nayib Bukele, a 37-year-old former mayor of San Salvador, ended 30 years of bipartisan rule by the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) with his election victory in February.

But the electoral coalition the former FMLN politician forged with right-wing allies for the five-year term won just 11 of 84 seats in Congress, forcing Bukele to promise to work with “all the political forces.”

“His strength is that he has awakened a lot of popular enthusiasm and that’s what he’s counting on,” said Jose Maria Tojeira, a political analyst and director of the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University in San Salvador.

“The traditional parties risk being swept away in the next elections if they fight the president or hinder government.”

Rampant crime is the main headache for most of El Salvador’s 6.6 million population. Bukele will inherit one of the most violent countries in the world, although under the outgoing FMLN government murders fell 15 percent in 2018.

At around 51 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, the murder rate is still about ten times higher than the United States.

Much of the blame is pinned on El Salvador’s “maras” - international criminal gangs involved in drug trafficking and extortion that have some 70,000 members. Previous governments have tried, but failed, to broker lasting truces between them.

Recently the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), the largest gang, floated the possibility of stopping violence through dialogue.

“We trust in God and in the new president Nayib,” a MS-13 spokesman told the Central American magazine Factum.

Gang violence has helped fuel mass migration from Central America and created tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Bukele said he will push ambitious public works to help contain migration, including plans for a Pacific railway, though he has given little indication of how he hopes to fund them.

El Salvador’s dollarized economy has not grown by more than 3% annually in the past decade and the government faces a steep challenge to shoulder external debts of over $9.5 billion without paring back welfare spending, analysts say.

The incoming president has used social media to burnish his profile, scoring a hit on Twitter earlier this year by ironically describing El Salvador as a “Mexican country” after Fox News in the United States had earlier made reference in an on-screen caption to “3 Mexican countries.”

Of Palestinian descent, the bearded Bukele capitalized on discontent towards the two established parties with his motto: “There’s enough money when no one steals.”

Promising to end widespread graft, he wants to create an international commission against corruption, similar to schemes once adopted by neighboring Guatemala and Honduras. </s> San Salvador: El Salvador’s new president, Nayib Bukele, took office on Saturday pledging to cure the Central American country that he described as a “sick child” following years of violence and migration that has strained relations with the United States.

The 37-year-old former mayor of San Salvador, who won more votes than all other candidates in the February presidential election, brought an end to a two-party system that has held sway over the country for three decades.

“Our country is like a sick child, now it’s up to all of us to take care of it,” Bukele told the crowd. “We have to suffer a little now, we have to have a little pain, assume our responsibility and all as brothers to bring forward that child.”

Accompanied by his pregnant wife Gabriela Rodriguez, Bukele vowed to make bitter decisions for the impoverished and violence-plagued Central American country during his five year term. He did not give details.

Bukele was born on July 24, 1981, in San Salvador. He is the son of Olga Ortez de Bukele and Armando Bukele Kattán, a prominent businessman and local imam of Palestinian descent.

Bukele, who has been critical of Beijing in the past, must now balance the interests of China and the United States.

The Chinese embassy in El Salvador said in a statement on Twitter that Bukele had told a special envoy he considered China a friend and that there was “great potential” to work together.

El Salvador broke ties with Taiwan in August last year to establish relations with China, following the Dominican Republic and Panama in the region.

US President Donald Trump congratulated Bukele on Saturday on Twitter, saying the United States was ready to work with him “to advance prosperity in El Salvador and the hemisphere.” Trump has frequently threatened to cut aid to El Salvador — as well as neighbouring Guatemala and Honduras — if they do not do more to curb migration to the United States.

The US Department of Commerce said in a statement that the United States sent a delegation led by US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to attend the ceremony.

While in El Salvador, the statement said, Ross met with Bukele and his Foreign Minister, Alexandra Hill, as well as with business leaders to discuss improving the investment climate and potential for economic growth.

Tensions over migration have been running high between the United States and its southern neighbour Mexico, with Trump threatening earlier this week to impose punitive tariffs on Mexican goods exported to the United States on June 10.

Mexican Economy Minister Graciela Marquez, who also attended the event in San Salvador, tweeted a picture of herself and Ross, saying they had spoken and would continue their dialogue next week in Washington.

Has been described as “anti-system” and “opportunist” by analysts, having changed parties three times ahead of the election
El Salvador's new President Nayib Bukele takes office.