SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — The celebration of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele authorised constitutional adjustments within the nation’s Legislative Meeting on Thursday that may permit indefinite presidential reelection and prolong presidential phrases to 6 years.
Lawmaker Ana Figueroa from the New Concepts celebration had proposed the adjustments to 5 articles of the structure. The proposal additionally included eliminating the second spherical of the election the place the 2 prime vote-getters from the primary spherical face off.
New Concepts and its allies within the Legislative Meeting rapidly authorised the proposals with the supermajority they maintain. The vote handed with 57 in favor and three opposed.
Bukele overwhelmingly won reelection final yr regardless of a constitutional ban, after Supreme Courtroom justices chosen by his celebration dominated in 2021 to permit reelection to a second five-year time period.
Observers have anxious that Bukele had a plan to consolidate energy since not less than 2021, when a newly elected Congress with a robust governing celebration majority voted to remove the magistrates of the constitutional chamber of the Supreme Courtroom. These justices had been seen because the final test on the favored president.
Since then, Bukele has solely grown extra well-liked. The Biden administration’s preliminary expressions of concern gave technique to quiet acceptance as Bukele introduced his run for reelection. With the return of U.S. President Donald Trump to the White Home in January, Bukele had a brand new highly effective ally and rapidly provided Trump assist by taking greater than 200 deportees from different international locations right into a newly constructed jail for gang members.
Figueroa argued Thursday that federal lawmakers and mayors can already search reelection as many instances as they need.
“All of them have had the potential for reelection by way of well-liked vote, the one exception till now has been the presidency,” Figueroa mentioned.
She additionally proposed that Bukele’s present time period, scheduled to finish June 1, 2029, as a substitute end June 1, 2027, to place presidential and congressional elections on the identical schedule. It will additionally permit Bukele to hunt reelection to a long run two years earlier.
Marcela Villatoro of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Area), one in every of three votes towards the proposals, instructed her fellow lawmakers that “Democracy in El Salvador has died!”
“You do not notice what indefinite reelection brings: It brings an accumulation of energy and weakens democracy … there’s corruption and clientelism as a result of nepotism grows and halts democracy and political participation,” she mentioned.
Suecy Callejas, the meeting’s vice chairman, mentioned that “energy has returned to the one place that it actually belongs … to the Salvadoran individuals.”
Bukele didn’t instantly remark.
Bukele, who as soon as dubbed himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” is extremely well-liked, largely due to his heavy-handed combat towards the nation’s highly effective road gangs.
Voters have been prepared to miss proof that his administration like others earlier than it had negotiated with the gangs, earlier than searching for a state of emergency that suspended some constitutional rights and allowed authorities to arrest and jail tens of 1000’s of individuals.
His success with safety and politically has impressed imitators within the area who search to copy his model.
Most just lately, Bukele’s authorities has confronted worldwide criticism for the arrests of high-profile lawyers who’ve been outspoken critics of his administration. One of many nation’s most distinguished human rights group introduced in July it was shifting its operations out of El Salvador for the security of its individuals, accusing the federal government of a “wave of repression.”