Nayib Bukele continues to claim that he will remain in power in El Salvador, despite the Central American country’s constitutional ban on re-election. Nuevas Ideas, the party of the president, announced Sunday night that it had registered the candidatures of Bukele and his vice-president Félix Ulloa for re-election in next year’s elections. Bukele’s candidacy is based on a controversial ruling by the Constitutional Chamber, whose president-appointed and loyal judges read the constitution, clearing the way for the popular president to re-enlist.
Although Bukele has not commented on his party’s announcement, Yes, retweeted the message that Nuevas Ideas published on its Twitter account on Sunday. “We inform the Salvadoran people that President Nayib Bukele and Vice-President Félix Ulloa are already registered as pre-candidates for the posts of President and Vice-President of the Republic of El Salvador, in the largest party in El Salvador’s history. “The new ideas are invincible,” said Bukele’s movement, which has become an overwhelming political force in El Salvador.
The controversial president enjoys enormous popularity in his country and it is taken for granted that he will win the next elections, despite criticism of his crime-fighting policies. Bukele had already consolidated his power in 2021 with an unprecedented victory in the general election, having secured an unprecedented number of MPs that gave him control of key institutions and a free hand to advance his political agenda, which included a War against Parliament belongs to the gangs that bled the country dry. For a year, Bukele has maintained a state of emergency and the lifting of constitutional guarantees in El Salvador, has campaigned for comprehensive prison reform and has arrested more than 68,000 people accused of belonging to criminal groups. The President reacted with derision to criticism from human rights organizations, who denounced systematic harassment of detainees, and by political opponents, who branded him the new “dictator”.
The opposition in particular has been overwhelmed by the political whirlwind represented by Bukele and his movement. Fed up with three decades of corruption and an inability to address the issues that plague them, Salvadorans have severely punished traditional parties, the left-wing Farabundo Martín National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). . After successive defeats, Salvadoran media reported in May that both organizations, once sworn enemies, will unite in a common front to defeat the current president in elections scheduled for 2024. The President reacted angrily and harshly criticized this new alliance. “A few years later, they consummate their connection. A civil war that left 85,000 dead and a million displaced, five decades behind schedule, our infrastructure destroyed, the emergence of gangs and false peace deals that plunged us into another 30 years of poverty and underdevelopment. They divided a country in two and made us kill one another among brothers; funded (both) by foreign powers. All that and much more to end here. God forgive them,” Bukele said at the time.
With virtually no strong opposition, he has enormous control over the entire state apparatus and the population supports him in his favour, Bukele only completes a mere trial to secure his re-election. The President, who has not had to reform the law to consolidate his power, is disregarding the Constitution, which states in Article 152 that “anyone who, during the … immediately preceding period or within the six months preceding the term of office of the presidents. The judges of the Constitutional Court, loyal to the president, presented the laws controversially and ruled that Bukele could be re-elected. In doing so, Bukele contradicts his own critical positions when he aspired to the presidency. “The constitution does not allow the same person to be president twice in a row. “This is to guarantee that he does not stay in power and that he takes power to stay in power,” the young politician said on a television program a few years ago.
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