Spanish
The Legislative Assembly of El Salvador, dominated by President Nayib Bukele's Nuevas Ideas (NI) party, approved this Thursday a constitutional reform that allows indefinite presidential re-election, by eliminating the prohibitions.
The initiative, which was approved with a waiver of procedure and without legislative study, had the 57 votes of the ruling party and its allies to reform articles 75, 80, 133, 152 and 154 of the Salvadoran Constitution, which until now prohibited immediate re-election.
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The reforms include extending the presidential term to six years, eliminating the second round in presidential elections, and shortening the current term so that it concludes in 2027 and not in 2029, this to coincide with the legislative and municipal elections of that year. In February 2024, within the framework of the presidential elections where he was re-elected, President Bukele was asked if he saw a constitutional reform that included indefinite re-election as necessary and he responded: "I think constitutional reform is not necessary." "It is imperative and unavoidable to synchronize electoral terms, extending the exercise of the presidency to six years, combined with an unrestricted re-election," reads the decree that was voted on and rejected by the opposition, which stated that with this reform "democracy has died in El Salvador." Another argument put forward by the NI deputies is to "avoid the permanent electoral campaigns and their high associated costs" by reducing the frequency of elections. In Article 80, the new wording eliminates the suspension of citizen rights for those who promote re-election, while in Article 152 it removes the section that indicated that the following cannot be a candidate for the Presidency: "anyone who has held the Presidency of the Republic for more than six months, consecutive or not, during the immediately preceding period, or within the last six months prior to the start of the presidential term.""Killing Democracy in Disguise"
Representative Marcela Villatoro, from the opposition Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), criticized the reform and said that the legislators "have made a public confession of killing democracy disguised as legality" and that "they have killed the Constitution". He asked them to stop "disguising dictatorships as popularity and romanticizing them", as well as pointing out that "they are self-appointing themselves as constituents and changing the meaning of the Constitution" without having that power. For her part, Claudia Ortiz, from the opposition party VAMOS, said that the legislators of the ruling party "are telling lies to make people believe that this reform is to give power back to the people". "It is evident that these reforms they are promoting are a plan they had drawn up long ago and that it is not to give power to the people, it is to keep power for yourselves, so that your party is always in power," he pointed out. Bukele began his second consecutive term on June 1, 2024, despite several articles of the Constitution prohibiting it, following a change in criteria by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, which the first Legislature dominated by NI in 2021 appointed in a questioned process.
