The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukelecommunicated on Thursday night that he will seek re-election in the 2024 elections to “continue this path that we have begun” with his arrival at the Executive in 2019. The announcement, which the deputies of his party and officials of his Government had been openly asking the least since last June, it was not entirely a surprise, given that the path began to open since March 2021. These are some of the keys that marked the way to the announcement of the re-election, a situation that has not occurred in El Salvador since the time of the military dictatorship:
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The renewal of Congress
The 2020 legislative elections gave the New Ideas (NI) party, formed by a Bukele movement and led by one of his cousins, and other of his allies control of the Legislative Assembly.
With 56 deputies, NI could make any decision without the need to negotiate with any other party, least of all the opposition, which was left with no room for maneuver. This meant a shift in the balance of power, given that Bukele had been governing since June 2019 with a Legislative Body with an opposition majority.
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New Congress and removal of Supreme Court judges
On May 1, 2021, a new legislature in Congress with a large pro-government majority took office and was catapulted under the popularity of Bukele. The first action of the deputies, of which 70% belong to the New Ideas party or its allies, was to remove the magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court and the attorney general.
In his place and in a process indicated as irregular by local and international voices, other lawyers were placed, including a former adviser to the Bukele Executive, a lawyer for the current director of the Police and a former commissioner of the Institute of Access to Public Information , who was chosen by the Salvadoran president in a contested process.
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“Thanks to that super majority (in Congress) it is possible to change the previous attorney general and the Constitutional Chamber,” Bukele said Thursday night before announcing his intention to remain in power.
Resolution enables re-election
At the beginning of September 2021, the Constitutional Chamber appointed in May of that same year issued a ruling in which they changed the criteria established in 2014, which indicated that immediate re-election was prohibited by the Constitution.
In 2014, the Chamber declared the presidential candidacy of Elías Antonio Saca unconstitutional, who was president between 2004 and 2009, and tried to return to government with the party with which Bukele won the elections in 2019.
Lawyer Jonatan Sisco, from the Cristosal humanitarian organization, told Efe that This reinterpretation is outside the powers of the magistrates, given that it occurred in a process in which the re-election was not in dispute..
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The judges argued that the 2014 interpretation is “wrong” and pointed out that, in their opinion, the Constitution allows a citizen to be president for a maximum of 10 years.
“It is the same article 152 ordinal 1 that allows a maximum of one person to exercise the Presidency for 10 years and in fact, the 1983 Constituent Assembly requires that those 10 years be exercised, if the people so decide, consecutively”, indicates the sentence.
He adds: “It would be illegitimate to promote the continuity of the president or a re-election beyond 10 years, that is, beyond two terms.”
The judges also pointed out a caveat in the qualification for immediate re-election: “The president who has run as a presidential candidate for a second term must be required to apply for a license during the six months prior” to the start of the next term.
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Electoral court pronounces
In mid-August, Efe asked the presiding magistrate of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Dora Esmeralda Martínez, at a press conference about the requirements that Bukele had to meet to seek re-election, but she refused to comment.
“As electoral judges, in jurisdictional matters I cannot give any opinion on that,” Martínez said at a press conference.
However, the TSE did make a statement on September 4, 2021 by issuing a statement in response to the aforementioned ruling of the Constitutional Chamber. The letter stated that the collegiate entity “will comply” with the ruling, “by virtue of the fact that the resolutions and sentences of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice are unappealable and mandatory.”
In 2013, Bukele stated in an interview that in El Salvador “The Constitution does not allow the same person to be president twice in a row”.
“That is to guarantee that he does not stay in power and that he does not occupy his power to stay in power,” said the president, who indicated when announcing his search for re-election that “the people must have the right to reject or continue the way it leads.”
EFE
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