There is no constitutional ban on the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. The controversial president has announced that he will formalize his candidacy for re-election this Sunday, despite legal bans in his country’s constitution that prevent him from repeating his mandate. From the President’s party, Nuevas Ideas, they have justified the need for Bukele to remain in office in order to maintain a political model that has managed to reduce insecurity in the Central American country. However, critical voices warn that it is a movement that wants to perpetuate itself in power and criticize the authoritarian tendencies of the politician. “I’m not a dictator,” defends Bukele, who has been in office since 2019.
This Sunday’s proclamation, along with his vice-president Félix Ulloa, marks the end of a process that began in September 2021, when the judges of the Constitutional Chamber, appointed by Bukele and loyal to the president, made a fundamental “interpretation” of the law, in which they found that consecutive re-election is feasible, paving the way for the popular president to repeat his term. In the same year, the electoral tribunal reported that it had accepted the judges’ decision and would give the green light for Bukele and Ulloa’s candidacy to be registered. The Salvadoran Constitution, in force since 1983, provides in Article 152 that “anyone who has held the Presidency of the Republic for more than six consecutive months or not during the immediately preceding period or during the six months preceding the presidential election. “ Term”. That is, it does not allow two consecutive mandates under any circumstances, although the wording leaves open the possibility of alternative mandates.
Bukele enjoys tremendous popularity among his country’s population, largely due to a brutal offensive more than a year ago against the gangs and criminal groups that spread terror in Salvadoran cities. At least 68,000 people have been arrested so far and official statistics show a significant drop in homicides and other crimes. However, human rights organizations have denounced extreme use of force and systematic human rights abuses, including deaths from torture, beatings, strangulation, extreme overcrowding, violations of due process, lack of guarantees, mass arrests and deaths in detention. In addition to his controversial war against the gangs, Bukele has made strides in controlling the state apparatus. The President had already consolidated his power in 2021 with an unprecedented victory in the general election after garnering an unprecedented number of MPs who gave him a free hand to advance his political agenda.
The president had already come under criticism in mid-June when he opened the Central American and Caribbean Games in San Salvador. Bukele, surrounded by thousands of fans shouting his name, smiled during the games’ opening ceremony and urged journalists who criticize him to visit the country’s cities and check on the safety he has achieved. “I’m not a dictator,” Bukele said to applause and cheers from an audience demanding “re-election.” The Games were a very expensive $100 million event to sell the world a safe and good business country, a Central American Singapore as Bukele himself defined it.
Bukele has criticized the American news agency Associated Press for chronicling his appearance at the games. AP quoted Alan McDougall, a sports historian at Canada’s University of Guelph, who compared it to authoritarian governments using major sporting events to gloss over their image. “The successful organization of an international event can give a regime the security of acting with impunity. “Sport is a shortcut to self-gain, not even popularity, just acceptance,” explained McDougall. According to the AP, the analyst was referring to “the use of athletics as a political tool in the 1930s, when Italy under Mussolini was hosting the World Cup and the Olympics were being held in Nazi Germany.” On Twitter, his favorite network for communicating his decisions, Bukele reacted with ridicule. “AP literally compares me to Hitler and Mussolini. Reductio ad Hitlerum: We won the debate,” he wrote.
“…Mussolini-led Italy hosted the World Cup and the Olympic Games were held in Nazi Germany.”@AP literally compares me to Hitler and Mussolini 😂
Reductio ad Hitlerum: We just won the debate 😎https://t.co/EXOyIXCo4r
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) July 8, 2023
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
subscribe to
Although Salvadorans celebrate low crime rates and express their reverence for their president, there are actions by Bukele that draw attention to an authoritarian turn in his government. The authorities recently asked the Guatemalan Book Fair, the largest in Central America, to do so will take the Liver Substance story collection out of the program, by Salvadoran writer Michelle Recinos, which brings together stories criticizing the exceptional regime imposed by Bukele, human rights abuses and enforced disappearances. The Salvadoran government is particularly concerned about the story entitled Barbers on Strike, a moving and alarming tale that explains how the army took to the streets in its war against gangs and made thousands of young men disappear. “The government of my country has banned the presentation of my book. bayonea? Yes, a tail. Shall we shut up? No. They won’t silence us,” Recinos wrote on Twitter, announcing that he will be launching his book this Saturday. Actions like these are putting writers, journalists and intellectuals on alert in El Salvador, who fear censorship is becoming the norm in their country as Nayib Bukele tries to stay in power.
Follow all international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.