Opinion: The Renaissance Advisor
Article at Revista Factum, published on 12 June 2024 https://www.revistafactum.com/el-asesor-renacentista/
Successful people often say you don’t need to know everything. The smartest person isn’t the one who knows everything but the one who surrounds themselves with those who do, listens to them, and learns. This is something the de facto president of the El Salvador understands very well.
That’s why we have advisors. Specialists in certain fields who, for a fee, help develop programs or policy recommendations to provide solutions.
In his illegal inauguration speech, Nayib Bukele announced that he wants to improve the economy. And although he proclaimed himself the country’s doctor and claimed to be God's branch on Earth, he knows very well that he can’t do it alone.
In part, because economics wasn’t his area of study. Actually, none of them were. And also because he’s probably too busy making people envy Kylie Jenner or the French Bourbons with his fashion choices.
That’s why, because he promised us progress and needs guidance, on June 11, he gave us the first surprise and announced a new advisor to improve the country's economy. To cure us of the second cancer, as he said in his graduation speech to the tropical tyrant.
And no. He didn’t look where the usual people would. He didn’t go to the big universities or to the retired staff from the world’s leading banks. God forbid he be seen with the usual crowd, who would tell him boring things like "don’t build fountains when people are dying of hunger," or "tighten your belt, you don’t have money."
I can already imagine those TikToks with no likes, those boring broadcasts, those dry headlines in Diario El Salvador. Nayib knows better.
Aware of the engagement, our Gaddafi with loroco chose the following logical option: more than an expert, a guide, a Rasputin, a Richelieu. A guru.
Faced with a country in economic uncertainty and the expectations of those who applaud his “bitter medicine” without complaint, Nayib Bukele decided to spend a few pennies bringing Brian Roemmele. And when we learn to pronounce his name, maybe he’ll be forgotten just like the foreign lawyer he brought as a human rights commissioner. A man whose name, dear reader, you probably can’t remember now.
But who is Roemmele? The government promotes him as an expert in Artificial Intelligence. ChatGPT describes him as a pioneer in voice assistant technology and financial technologies.
He’s the founder of the titan Multiplex. But don’t get confused with the first Multiplex that shows up on Google. That’s an Australian construction company. Nor is it the second, an Argentine movie theater chain. Or the German manufacturer of remote-controlled planes, the blender company, or the pioneer in yacht technology. His company is a bit further down: it's result number 16, the blog to improve your ChatGPT prompts.
Moreover, Roemmele is the author behind a marketing book for small businesses... using Pokémon Go.
The new advisor describes himself as a scientist, researcher, analyst, connector, thinker, and man of action. He could have used other words, like the ones from the horoscope in teenage magazines: “Mystical, unreachable god, unique and mysterious, sweet, passionate. His lucky number is 26, his stone is jade...” And so on.
Roemmele also considers himself a man of the Renaissance.
Not the first expert
Nayib Bukele faces a country with hunger and people struggling to make ends meet. And he’s known for a while now that he needs experts. Four years ago, in February 2020, just before sending the military into the Assembly, he met with one of them.
At that time, it was Ricardo Hausmann, an engineer and economist from the prestigious Cornell University in the United States. Former Planning Minister of Venezuela. A lecturer and researcher at Oxford, advisor to central banks, with positions at the IDB, the IMF, and the World Bank. Director of the Department of International Development and the Growth Lab at Harvard University...
I lost your attention, sorry.
Four years later, no longer as a president playing with soldiers while talking about God, but as a dictator who... plays with soldiers while talking about God, Bukele doesn’t seem willing to make the same mistake of meeting with someone who doesn’t fit on TikTok. That’s why he brings in another advisor. This advisor.
One less academic. Maybe a bit more human. Who, instead of giving conferences at the best universities, sells his books for $1.99.
I don’t know if Roemmele is the best they could get or just the only one who answered the phone. What I do know, and in the absence of new announcements, is that in his scientific and Renaissance mind rest the ideas that will shape the country’s future, feed the poorest, and attract investments. Or at least teach the cabinet to use ChatGPT.
