El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele provides a press convention in San Salvador, El Salvador, Jan. 14, 2025.
Salvador Melendez/AP
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Salvador Melendez/AP
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — The occasion of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele authorized constitutional adjustments within the nation’s Nationwide Meeting on Thursday that can enable indefinite presidential reelection and lengthen presidential phrases to 6 years.
Lawmaker Ana Figueroa from the New Concepts occasion 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 Nationwide Meeting shortly authorized the proposals with the supermajority they maintain. The vote handed with 57 in favor and three opposed.
Bukele overwhelmingly received reelection final 12 months regardless of a constitutional ban, after Supreme Courtroom justices chosen by his occasion dominated in 2021 that it allowed reelection to a second five-year time period.
Figueroa argued Thursday that federal lawmakers and mayors can already search reelection as many occasions as they need.
“All of them have had the possibility of reelection through popular vote, the only exception until 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 enable Bukele to hunt reelection to a long run two years earlier.
Marcela Villatoro of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Area), one among three votes in opposition to the proposals, advised her fellow lawmakers that “Democracy in El Salvador has died!”
“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 mentioned.
Suecy Callejas, the meeting’s vp, mentioned that “power has returned to the only place that it truly belongs … to the Salvadoran people.”
Bukele didn’t instantly remark.
Bukele, who as soon as dubbed himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” is extremely in style, largely due to his heavy-handed struggle in opposition to the nation’s highly effective road gangs.
Voters have been keen 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 hundreds of individuals.
His success with safety and politically has impressed imitators within the area who search to copy his type.
