(CNN)Last weekend, El Salvador elected Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez, 37, to the presidency. The businessman and former mayor’s path to the presidency was circuitous, marked with struggles to find a political party — which may ultimately have proven a good omen, as polls suggest that Bukele’s supporters were dissatisfied with the country’s traditional political parties.
Bukele has called himself a man of the left and began his political life in the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). However, he ended up running for president with the conservative Great Alliance for National Unity (GANA) party.
“It’s hard to see where he fits into current Latin American politics,” said Mike Scranton, professor of political science at the University of Scranton and former Fulbright scholar to El Salvador.
“Bukele’s considered a populist, an outsider candidate who ran against the system. He says that he comes from the left, but he had to join a political party of the right to run.”
Bukele, who often appears in a glossy leather motorcycle jacket and slicked-back hair, is a Yamaha motorcycle distributor and a declared supporter of Salvadoran soccer team Alianza. His wife, psychologist and ballerina…
