San Salvador (EFE).- El Salvador’s parliament, dominated by President Nayib Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party, approved a constitutional reform Thursday that allows for indefinite presidential re-elections.
The initiative, approved without a procedural waiver and without legislative review, received 57 votes from 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.
The reforms include extending the presidential term to six years, eliminating the runoff election in presidential elections, and shortening the current term to 2027 instead of 2029, to align with the legislative and municipal elections that year.
In February 2024, during the presidential elections in which he was reelected, Bukele was asked if he saw the need for a constitutional reform that would include indefinite re-election, with his saying that “constitutional reform is not necessary.”
“It is urgent and unavoidable to synchronize electoral times by extending the term of office of the presidency to six years, combined with unreserved reelection,” reads the decree that was voted on and was rejected by the opposition, which said “democracy has died in El Salvador” with this reform.
Another argument put forward by the ruling party lawmakers is to “avoid permanent electoral campaigns and their associated high costs” by reducing the frequency of elections.
In Article 80, the new wording eliminates the suspension of civil rights for those seeking re-election, while in Article 152 it removes the section that said “anyone who has served as President of the Republic for more than six months, consecutive or not, during the immediately preceding term, or within the last six months prior to the start of the presidential term, cannot be a candidate for president.”
Representative Marcela Villatoro, of the opposition Nationalist Republican Alliance, criticized the reform, saying that the legislators “have made a public confession of killing democracy disguised as legality” and that “they have killed the constitution.”
She asked them to stop “disguising themselves as popular and romanticizing dictatorships,” and added that “they are appointing themselves constituents and changing the meaning of the Constitution” without having that power.
Claudia Ortiz, of the opposition Vamos party, said ruling party legislators “are telling lies to make people believe that this reform is about returning power to the people.”
“It’s clear that these reforms they are promoting are a plan they’ve had in mind for a long time, and that it’s not about giving power to the people, it’s about keeping power for yourselves, so that your party remains in power forever,” she said.
Bukele began his second consecutive term on Jun. 1, 2024, despite several articles of the Constitution prohibiting it, following a change of opinion by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, which the first Nuevas Ideas-dominated legislature appointed in 2021 in a contested process. EFE
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