San Salvador, El Salvador
AP
–
El Salvador President Naibe Bukere approved the constitutional changes in the country’s legislative assembly on Thursday.
New Ideas Party MP Ana Figueroa had proposed changes to five articles in the Constitution. The proposal also included elimination of the second round of elections, in which two top voters in the first round, faced off.
The new ideas of the Legislative Assembly and their allies quickly approved the proposal with the vast majority they hold. The vote was passed by 57 people, with three opposed.
Bukkel won last year’s reelection by far, despite constitutional bans. A Supreme Court judge selected by his party has ruled in 2021 that he will be re-elected to be re-elected to a five-year term.
Observers worry that Bukele has plans to consolidate power when, at least in 2021, a newly elected assembly with a strong governing party majority votes to eliminate magistrates in the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Room. These justices were considered the last checks of popular presidents.
Since then, Bukel has only become more popular. The Biden administration’s first expression of concern replaced a quiet acceptance as Bukele announced his run for reelection. With President Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January, Bukere quickly offered Trump’s help by having a new, powerful alliance and taking over 200 other exiles from other countries to newly built prisons for gang members.
Figueroa claimed Thursday that federal lawmakers and mayors could already seek re-election multiple times.
“They all had the potential to be re-elected through the popular vote. The only exception to this day was the presidency,” Figueroa said.
She also proposed that Bukere’s current term, which is scheduled to end on June 1, 2029, would instead end on June 1, 2027, with the presidential and parliamentary elections being placed on the same schedule. Also, Bukere can seek re-election in the long term two years ago.
Marcela Viratoro of the Nationalist Republican Union (arena), one of the three votes on the proposal, told her fellow lawmakers, “The democracy in El Salvador has passed away!”
“You don’t understand what indefinite reelection brings. It brings about accumulation of power and weakens democracy… There’s corruption and clientism as nepotism stops and stops democracy and political participation,” she said.
“Power has returned to the only place it really belongs…back to the Salvadoran people,” said Sussy Kalejas, vice president of the parliament.
Bukel did not immediately comment.
Once dubbed “the coolest dictator in the world”, Bukel is extremely popular, mainly due to his strong fight against the country’s powerful street gang.
Voters are willing to overlook his administration like other administrations before negotiating with gangs before suspending their constitutional rights and seeking an emergency that allows authorities to arrest tens of thousands of people and jail.
Security and politically his success influenced local copycats who were trying to replicate his style.
Most recently, Bukel’s government has faced international criticism for the arrest of a well-known lawyer who was an outspoken critic of his administration. One of the nation’s most prominent human rights groups, announced in July, that it had shifted operations from El Salvador for the safety of its people, accusing the government of being a “wave of oppression.”
