Nayib Bukele will focus in the coming months on a campaign that is prohibited by El Salvador’s political constitution. The popular and controversial president was given permission in Parliament last Thursday to be out of office for six months and begin the race for re-election. The motion was approved without question by 67 of the 84 MPs.
Bukele’s desire for re-election was given free rein in September 2021 when the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (CSJ) changed the criteria against immediate re-election in El Salvador. It was a similar political movement to Juan Orlando Hernández in Honduras and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua to stay in power. True to the president who decreed it, the CSJ reinterpreted the Salvadoran Basic Law, which prohibits immediate re-election in at least five articles.
Ignoring repeated calls to respect his country’s highest law, Bukele launched this re-election campaign at one of his greatest moments in popularity: under the controversial emergency regime that has reduced gang violence and spawned positive opinion among Salvadorans, despite multiple reports of human rights abuses in prisons, arbitrary detentions and short-term disappearances.
The license received by Bukele was the final requirement for the president to seek a second term in the February 4 elections. Not only the judiciary and the polls speak in favor of the president, but also the opposition, which is burdened by corruption cases and has little support among the citizens. “The infamous facts were reached yesterday [por el jueves 30 de noviembre] They constitute a triple constitutional fraud. “The perpetrators have feigned formal compliance with constitutional norms while violating others that prohibit re-election, renunciation of the presidency and those that regulate the appointment and function of presidential candidates,” said the citizens’ movement SUMAR in a statement.
“There is no president in El Salvador”
Bukele is accompanied by his vice president Félix Ulloa, who is also seeking re-election. According to the constitution, the president had to submit a shortlist to replace both during the election campaign, but he proposed only one person: Claudia Juana Rodríguez de Guevara, his private secretary and patron of his financial activities.
“She is not a politician, she is the manager of the president’s affairs,” Ricardo Vaquerano, one of the most prominent investigative journalists in El Salvador, told El PAÍS. “Claudia Juana worked first in the accounting department and then in the finance department of Obermet, the Bukele family’s advertising company. When Nayib started her political career, she was responsible for the finances of the mayor’s office of Nuevo Cuscatlán, where Nayib was mayor for the first time in 2015. She then took over the mayor’s office of the capital San Salvador, where she became treasurer. … and since Nayib already held the Presidency of the Republic, she became the Finance Director of the Presidency.”
Vaquerano also points out that Rodríguez Guevara was finance minister for the Nuevas Ideas party. “It is the president’s party and this party has made absolutely nothing transparent, even though the law requires transparency about the source of its funding,” the journalist adds. The interim president of El Salvador holds several positions, including chairing the board of the National Directorate of Municipal Works (DOM).
Félix Ulloa, Vice President of El Salvador under Bukele, in July 2022 Álvaro García
“The DOM is an institution created two years ago to channel to Rodríguez Guevara all the money previously transferred to the municipalities from the general budget of the nation. We are talking about the DOM having at least around $680 million for its work this year, but it is also closed to citizen control. In short, the person he put there is a person he always put where the money is,” Vaquerano says. The journalist emphasizes that in 2020 the General Prosecutor’s Office received twelve reports from the Anti-Corruption Commission on the irregular use of more than $150 million in funds used as part of the pandemic emergency.
Despite the criticism, lawmakers approved the interim term of Rodríguez de Guevara, who will become the first woman to hold the presidency of El Salvador. “Citizen Claudia Juana Rodríguez de Guevara is elected as determined by the President of the Republic for the current presidential term ending on May 31, 2024,” the approved decree reads.
Vaquerano insists that Bukele’s secretary “did not have an appointment consistent with the provisions of the constitution.” “Any person who will hold the presidency has to go through the protest in the legislative assembly and this lady did not even appear in the legislative assembly. That’s why there is currently no president in El Salvador,” says the journalist.
Bukele retains jurisdiction
Vaquerano also criticizes that Bukele’s candidacy represents “unfair competition” since the license granted does not waive his immunity as president. The journalist remembers, for example, that the president controls the judiciary and the prosecutor’s office, so any slander he utters during the election campaign has no consequences.
“Every candidate wants to have the resources provided by the state, such as transportation; the security that the state also offers you. The state media will repeat everything you say during the election campaign. So this is also a big advantage for Nayib,” he says. “I add another, slightly more dangerous example: political intelligence services. About three days ago, Bukele made it clear on a national broadcaster that although he was leaving the presidency, he would “keep an eye on her.” Bukele is not leaving, he is pretending to be leaving, but he will continue to maintain control or proximity to key officials.”
Vaquerano quotes the director of the State Intelligence Agency and police intelligence as warning that the Bukele government has already used Israeli software Pegasus to spy on opponents, its own proxies, academics and critical journalists in El Salvador. “You can know what your opponents are planning, what they are doing, what the political parties that will run in 2024 are planning,” says the journalist. “If we add to that the fact that he has an iron grip on the prosecution, the police and the judiciary, he has everything he needs to intimidate them.”
Bukele during the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2023 in New York, USA. JUSTIN LANE (EFE)