President Nayib Bukele announced a political earthquake: He ordered his deputies to eliminate a third of the seats in the assembly and also 80 percent of the country’s mayoral offices ahead of the 2024 election, completely messing up the electoral map of “inconvenient” journalism and confrontation with the Government.
But Bukele also chose a new enemy in his rhetoric: corruption. Officials like Osiris Luna and Carolina Recinos, who are on Engel’s list of corrupt and undemocratic actors, were not present when the president announced his “war on corruption,” the report said.
Others, such as Congressman Christian Guevara and Legal Secretary Conan Castro, attended but held back.
The measures, which break up the composition of the legislature and municipalities, are two measures that change the political map and that could help Bukele concentrate more power than he already has, claimed the approach of the publication, which recently part of its Machinery transferred to Costa Rica due to alleged lack of guarantees for its work.
On the other hand, El Faro intensified the fight against corruption, which will probably also affect government officials and Bukele’s New Ideas Party.
This could be the case of Conan Castro, his legal secretary who is on the Engel list for anti-democracy practices, or another United States-sanctioned like Guevara, the chairman of the pro-government bank who, according to the newspaper, made money paying during the pandemic he paid $1 million for government contracts and lost his US visa for enforcing a gagging law.
One aspect that stands out among the disagreements in the country is the justification for the emergency regime, which has been criticized by human rights organizations and international monitoring missions.
Likewise, the reduction in the number of deputies is welcomed as a move that wants to favor the Nuevas Ideas party, assured the organization Acción Ciudadana in a study published on March 29.
Regarding the reduction in communes, Ruth López, head of the organization Cristosal’s legal and anti-corruption department, argued that it represented “another turn in the concentration of power and the centralization of decisions,” El Faro added.
“El Salvador is already a different country. “This is just the beginning,” said the President at the end of his message, in which politicians appreciate the continuity of the existing disagreements with the current government.
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