Shadow of Guaidó’s Party in El Salvador’s Elections

By Misión Verdad – Feb 28, 2024

Amid a controversial electoral process, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador proclaimed his victory just two hours after the polls closed on February 4. He declared that he had obtained 85% of the votes and his party, Nuevas Ideas, would get 58 of the 60 seats in parliament.

Although the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of El Salvador had not been able to announce reliable results of the parliamentary vote based on the quick counting, Bukele relied on his own data collection center, managed by extreme-right Venezuelans close to coup leader Juan Guaidó, to proclaim his victory. The head of the electoral campaign command of Nuevas Ideas party, Léster Toledo, and his company Salto Angel Consulting played a key role in Bukele’s strategy.

An article published by El Faro exposes the controversial electoral process in El Salvador and the influence of the group of advisors led by Toledo.

“The leader of the campaign command of Nayib Bukele and Nuevas Ideas is the Venezuelan advisor Léster Toledo and his company Salto Angel Consulting, which operated a call center to ensure the presence of watchmen in the voting centers and deployed pollsters to analyze the results,” the article stated.

It highlights the differences in the capacity to transmit data between the Salvadoran TSE and President Bukele’s campaign command. While the former suffered from difficulties, the latter processed the data smoothly and the results kept arriving quickly.

“Léster Toledo posted a video on his social media accounts describing the functioning of the campaign command that his team of advisors from Salto Angel Consulting managed,” the article explained. “That company was in charge of deployment of pollsters who compiled a summary of the data from the voting centers. ‘I spoke with President Bukele several times that day,’ says Toledo in an advertising spot of his company, and claims that his company compiled information provided by 200,000 people to confirm that Bukele had won the election.”

The relationship of Léster Toledo with Nayib Bukele, as well as with his brothers Karim, Ibrahim, and Yusef Bukele, dates back to Bukele’s 2019 presidential campaign, when Toledo acted as a strategist for the then-candidate. In May 2019, Bukele traveled to the United States and met with Carlos Vecchio, a close collaborator of Toledo who at that time had been appointed “Venezuelan ambassador” to the US by the fake government of Juan Guaidó. Vecchio thanked Bukele for his endorsement of Guaidó. Subsequently, in November 2019, the diplomatic corps of the government of President Nicolás Maduro was expelled from El Salvador.

By 2021 Léster’s brother, Lénder Toledo, and another Guaidó collaborator Esteban Vicuña were put in charge of the Salvadoran government’s social media and propaganda team, in collaboration with Sarah Hanna, leader of another team of right-wing Venezuelans belonging to a privileged decision-making circle within the Salvadoran government.

Although there is no official information on this circle, it has been revealed that these groups of Venezuelans receive fees from the Private Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic. Consulted on the subject in 2021, Léster Toledo refused to reveal the exact amount he has earned as an advisor, arguing that his contracts contain “client confidentiality clauses.”

These “advisors” linked to Guaidó and his Popular Will (VP) party operate in a sort of hidden parallel cabinet for the management of government projects as well as projects of the Nuevas Ideas party. Previously El Faro had revealed that, during the pandemic, these advisors were involved in the creation of a $2 billion “Emergency Fund” destined to coordinate international donations for the delivery of food baskets to families, something that evokes the Venezuelan government’s CLAP food program.

Nayib Bukele Proclaims Himself Winner of Elections in El Salvador

Toledo’s contracts with the Bukele administration and Nuevas Ideas were handled by Salto Angel Consulting Inc. This opaque entity which was registered in Delaware, the United States, in 2017; names Léster Toledo as its CEO; and does not provide information about its shareholders or directors.

According to the El Faro article, “Toledo not only hides how much he bills Nuevas Ideas but also says very little about the owners. ‘They are Venezuelans and Americans, who registered the company in Delaware to protect their identity,’ stated Toledo. ‘Because employing me puts at risk the integrity of their families in Venezuela, where for being a leader of Popular Will I have been stigmatized as a promoter of assassinations, and that is why they had to make the registration private’.”

A series of photographs shared by Léster Toledo of the celebration of Bukele’s victory highlight the presence of Luis Somaza, Juan Guaidó’s second-in-command who is also listed as a campaign advisor in Salto Angel Consulting. The images also show Lénder Toledo and Leonardo Arteaga, a VP politician who has participated in “public events in spaces reserved for ministers and officials of the presidency” of El Salvador.

The article also mentions the presence of Venezuelan advisors coming from Popular Will’s local commands in Maracaibo, of the Venezuelan state of Zulia.

The revelation that these members of Guaidó’s party exercise a clandestine control over the political decisions of the Bukele government sheds light on the presence of the right-wing Venezuelan political group beyond the borders of Venezuela, which sometimes behaves as a party and other times as a company.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/SC/DZ