Bukele's crooked electoral rules

Few things bother Nayib Bukele, his henchmen and his followers as much as being told that a dictatorship is being installed in El Salvador. It bothers them so much that in the year before his unconstitutional re-election he had to organize international events, such as the Central American and Caribbean Games and Miss Universe, to show the world a Manichaean reality with what he basically proposed: if we lived in a dictatorship , could we do this?

History in El Salvador shows that yes. What's more, Bukele is not the first to use sport and beauty to cleanse his face; military governments did so in the past that also believed in force as the only measure to solve the problems of the small Central American country. And democracy is a concept so little explained, understood and, for many people in El Salvador, useless, that it is easy to believe that elections like those of this Sunday, February 4, are free and democratic. Calling elections and having opposition instead of imposing a single candidate sounds very democratic, but the trick is in the details.

The main example of how undemocratic the elections are going to be is Bukele's candidacy for re-election. In the democratic version of El Salvador explained in the Constitution of the Republic, there is an explicit prohibition for incumbent presidents to compete for a consecutive term. The Magna Carta says it in six different articles. There is no room for interpretation of the opposite. The same Bukele from 10 years ago, when he began his career as a politician, was very clear about it. He also had that same clarity in 2019, recently installed in the Presidential House: “I am going to leave the presidency at 42 years old,” he said in an interview, questioned about whether he was going to seek re-election. He forgot everything when, according to statements by his vice president, Bukele found a “hidden item” which gave him the green light, but blocked the possibility of a candidacy by the president who preceded him. Re-election is so synonymous with dictatorship that the only president in the history of El Salvador who was re-elected before Bukele was Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, the dictator who ruled for 11 years between 1933 and 1944.

In a democracy where the separation of powers exists, for the President of the Republic to interpret the Constitution as he pleases is a maneuver that the judiciary is responsible for putting a stop to. But the division of powers is so non-existent that Bukelism also controls it. In May 2021, when Nuevas Ideas, Bukele's party, won the absolute majority in the Legislative Assembly, the first thing it did upon taking office was to dismiss the five magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber and impose its own. As the manual of every autocrat dictates: the president justified the decision of his deputies in an article of the Constitution that gives them that power “for specific causes, previously established by law.”

The sin of the magistrates, who submitted their resignation under threats and police intimidation outside their homes, was have reversed measures imposed by the president to contain the pandemic, such as the arrest of people for breaking home quarantine. The Chamber justified its decision by clarifying that the Health Code should not be interpreted “under any circumstances in terms of punitive power in the hands of the State.” An exceptional regime that, contrary to the current one, did have restrictions due to the violation of fundamental rights that it entailed. Bukele doesn't like being told that he can't do things the way he wants. And that is why there is no Prosecutor's Office to remind him of the limitations of his power and investigate the corruption of his own. He also imposed that.

Bukele and his deputies were democratically elected, yes, but that does not mean that they have unlimited power, as they have demonstrated to be the democracy in which they believe. The vote does not mean a blank check to change the laws at will, but to be guarantors that the actions of the State correspond to the interests of the people they represent. Bukele may be very popular, but the results that have brought him there are based on the destruction of democratic institutions, the blocking of access to public information, the annulment of fundamental rights and the harassment of the independent press. Each and every characteristic feature of a dictatorship. So it looks very cool on social networks and television.

In a country where everything is governed and directed by the same person, there is no democracy even if the vote is “free”; that freedom is also a fallacy. In June 2023, Bukele decided that to accumulate more power they would change the rules of the electoral game. He reorganized the political division of the country (from 262 municipalities to 44), reduced the number of deputies (from 84 to 60; his party currently has 56), and changed the formula for counting votes. This was also prohibited in the Electoral Code, which establishes that changes cannot be made less than a year before the election, but that was not a problem, because its deputies had already decided to repeal it in March, three months before.

The Supreme Electoral Court, which in theory is independent, has also not been a guarantor that the conditions for exercising the vote are respected, much less that those of the candidates in competition are equal for all. Although this is the only institution where Bukele has not dismissed anyone, the magistrates do not dare to go against him either, even if the position requires them to. What exists in El Salvador, on the other hand, is a blind, deaf and mute electoral judge who only sees the use of public funds and institutions pass to campaign early, induce the vote and take advantage of the position to request it. This is how we have seen TikToks of the vice president of the Assembly asking for the vote “for the N” to “continue giving governability to President Bukele”, the massive delivery of food packages just a few days before the elections and the unnecessary deployment of the Armed Forces as intimidation.

It is an unwritten law, but proven in practice, that anyone who dares to go against Bukele's will will be reprimanded. While in a democracy, dissent is respected, in an authoritarian and dictatorial regime, it is punished and silenced.

The dictatorship may not seem like a dictatorship if Leo Messi fills a stadium in a friendly match between Inter Miami and the El Salvador team where the cheapest tickets cost 200 dollars, and if videos of influencers praising the model that all of Latin America wants to replicate. If the supposed democracy is based on the fear of being persecuted, it is a dictatorship. Without counterweights that limit power and guarantee that constitutional guarantees are respected for all, democracy is a lie that protects me today, but tomorrow it takes away
from me, because then rights are whimsical and not obligatory.

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