Washington.- The United States Government expressed its support this Tuesday for El Salvador’s constitutional reform, which approves the indefinite re-election of the president, thus clearing the way for Nayib Bukele to seek a third term, and rejected the comparison of the Central American country with a dictatorship.
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“We reject the comparison of El Salvador’s legislative process, based on democracy and constitutionally sound, with illegitimate dictatorial regimes in other parts of our region,” he added. The Legislative Assembly of El Salvador ratified last Friday a constitutional reform that allows indefinite re-election, extends the presidential term to six years – when it was five – and eliminates the second round of elections. This reform offers Bukele, widely popular for his fight against gangs, the possibility of running for a third consecutive term, although he has not yet officially announced his intention to do so. The Salvadoran opposition and international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW), have criticized the reform, considering that it erodes the country’s democracy to perpetuate Bukele in power, comparing the situation to that of Nicaragua and Venezuela. Bukele defended the reform on Sunday, emphasizing that the majority of developed countries allow the indefinite re-election of their heads of government, among which he cited the United Kingdom, Spain, or Denmark. The Bukele government is one of the main allies of the Donald Trump Administration in Latin America, with whom it agreed to send irregular migrants to El Salvador’s maximum security prison, which has been accused of human rights violations.
