Bukele’s response after disastrous Monday

Many people left quarantine yesterday expecting to receive money or to be included in the Government’s database, as advised by Nayib Bukele on national television and his own social media.

Many people were devastated after not getting anything, national police used pepper spray on others, some were threatening to go inside supermarkets and others were saying all this was coordinated by the rest of political parties in order to make Bukele look bad.

The president went to his social media (again) and this was his response:

 

We have made mistakes, too many. We have tried to do our best and we have failed.

Our country is too poor, 90% of the population does not have a bank account and we have not had a census for 14 years.

We are doing our best to fix everything that was wrong for decades, in one week. Including hospitals that were literally falling.

We got money, which is not the one approved by the Assembly, because that has not even been obtained and they have not even approved expenses (which by decree they are the only ones who can approve it). From the money we raised on our own, we decided to give $300 to each family in need, but it has been almost impossible. Because we do not have a census, because we do not have bank accounts to deposit, because if we say that they should go in order, they all come to collect in disorder because they are hungry and live in poverty and that is understandable. Although we were not the ones who made them poor, nor were we the ones who did not enumerate them or the culprits who never worked on culture, so that we could be ordered and we could enter a bank agency in order.

90% of the people who have arrived at the banks did not even have to arrive today. Most of the people who came to CENADE were going to bring the money, when we always said that money would not be delivered there. But many did not read. Others think that if they get there first, they will beat others.

Many say that we should do like most countries and only put a curfew and that everyone see how they do at home. That not even the powers of the world are giving money. But I know that most do not have anything to eat and it would be to choose between the virus or hunger. We try to design systems to give you that money and it’s failure after failure.

They tell us why we don’t prepare in advance. And how? We have had to think fast about everything, with obstacles everywhere and with structural problems that cannot be solved in 2 weeks, even if we do not sleep a minute and work at full speed. All in the midst of a pandemic that we have to contain.

We are remodeling the hospitals. In a few days we will have finished several. And I break my head thinking why they haven’t been fixed in 30 years. And now they are the first to come out complaining that we don’t finish them in a weekend.

Worst of all, the infection is not yet at its most critical point. How will our country be in 2 weeks? And in 3?

In truth, I don’t know. I only know that it will be much worse, and if we continue like this, I think we cannot even imagine it. If we are already eating each other when the real crisis has not even started.

God help us. Although I don’t know if we deserve it anymore.

 

Let’s not forget that our current President chose not to have a formal transition team, just like Donald Trump, and he shut down the Secretary of Planning, which could have been useful in moments like these. He and his press secretary have been sharing fake news on his social media, spreading fear and he is never one to acknowledge his own mistakes. Nobody is complaining about hospitals. He has stated time and time again that he will be building the biggest hospital in Central America (a temporary change at the Center of Conventions that costs more than the renovation of the Rosales Hospital), the main issue here is that a situation like this would require to work with a team with experience, with a group of Health professionals, with the different institutions at local level but it is not prudent to do something like that. Right now it is more important to preserver this image of the mesiah that will save us all, like Duarte and Funes once did.

 

At least, we have these unsafe masks. Branding is important: