Salvador’s San Salvador El Salvador’s National Assembly on Thursday passed constitutional amendments proposed by President Nayib Bukele’s party that would increase the length of presidential mandates to six years and permit perpetual presidential reelection.
The amendments to the constitution’s five articles were suggested by New Ideas party lawmaker Ana Figueroa. The idea also called for doing away with the election’s second round, which pits the two candidates who received the most votes in the first round against one another.
The ideas were swiftly accepted by New Ideas and its supporters in the National Assembly using their supermajority. With 57 votes in favor and 3 against, the vote was approved.
Following a 2021 ruling by justices chosen by his party in the Supreme Court that permitted reelection to a second five-year term, Bukele easily won reelection last year in contravention of a constitutional ban.
Figueroa contended on Thursday that mayors and federal MPs already have the right to run for reelection as often as they like.
“All of them have had the possibility of reelection through popular vote, the only exception until now has been the presidency,” Figueroa stated.
In order to align the dates of the presidential and congressional elections, she also suggested that Bukele’s current term, which was originally set to expire on June 1, 2029, be extended to June 1, 2027. Additionally, it would enable Bukele to run for reelection two years sooner for a longer term.
“Democracy in El Salvador has died!” declared Marcela Villatoro of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), one of the three parliamentarians who voted against the proposals.
“You don’t realize what indefinite reelection brings: It brings an accumulation of power and weakens democracy … there’s corruption and clientelism because nepotism grows and halts democracy and political participation,” she stated.
The deputy president of the assembly, Suecy Callejas, declared that “power has returned to the only place that it truly belongs… to the Salvadoran people.”
Bukele refrained from commenting right away.
Once referring to himself as “the world’s coolest dictator,” Bukele’s popularity is largely due to his tough stance against the nation’s influential street gangs.
Evidence that his administration, like others before it, had engaged in negotiations with the gangs before requesting a state of emergency that suspended certain fundamental rights and gave authorities the authority to detain and imprison tens of thousands of people has been disregarded by voters.
His political and security achievements have encouraged regional copycats who aim to emulate his approach.
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