By AndreX - CC BY-SA 4.0
Official photo of President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.
El Salvador’s young president Nayib Bukele has officially been selected by his party to run for re-election in the upcoming 2024 elections. But his bid is illegal under the country’s constitution.
A constitutional provision prohibits re-election in the Central American country, but Bukele has continued to concentrate power around himself and his political party and utilized his co-optation of the courts to get around the ban.
“It is a clear break with the constitutional order,” Héctor Lindo-Fuentes, an emeritus professor of History at Fordham University in New York and host of a Salvadoran history channel on YouTube, tells The Progressive. “All constitutional lawyers agree that the Constitution prohibits re-election. It is a very long tradition in Salvadoran constitutional history.”
Bukele is not the first president of El Salvador to violate the constitution and seek re-election. The last to win re-election was the dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, more than seventy-five years ago, who also won his bid after consolidating power through the co-optation of state institutions.
El Salvador’s current president, who has previously called himself “the coolest dictator in the world,” has taken steps to concentrate power around himself.
El Salvador’s current president, who has previously called himself “the coolest dictator in the world,” has taken similar steps to concentrate power around himself.
The announcement of Bukele’s registration to run for re-election comes as he and his New Ideas party have taken steps to reduce the number of municipalities in the country from 262 to forty-four. On June 14, the main legislative body officially approved the reduction of municipalities, with Ernesto Castro, the president of the country’s congress and a member of the New Ideas party, calling the act “a historic moment.”
Ahead of the vote to reduce the number of municipalities, the legislative branch approved an electoral reform that decreased the number of congressional representatives from eighty-four to sixty. All of these developments are part of efforts by the Bukele administration to concentrate power around himself and his allies.
“The changes in territorial jurisdictions have been carried out by governments to limit the opposition and increase its own power, since more control of resources is given,” Lindo-Fuentes explains. “It gives [the ruling party] power over all public works, which can be attributed to the [ruling] government.”
He adds, “It is manipulating public opinion to create a favorable image by invading social networks with its messages and with a truly unprecedented communications device in the history of El Salvador.”
Bukele has continued to maintain widespread support, with his approval rating continually remaining at more than 85 percent. His popularity stems from his crackdown on gangs through heavy-handed tactics, which has generated widespread criticism from human rights groups and on social media .
But Bukele’s social media presence has also benefited from the support of paid propaganda by online trolls who have carried out attacks against his critics in the press and against his political opponents, as Reuters reported in November 2022. Yet his policies seem to have done little to resolve the economic crisis the country faces.
As Bukele prepares to run for re-election, he has already overseen the rapid co-optation of the country’s institutions.
As Bukele prepares to run for re-election, he has already overseen the rapid co-optation of the country’s institutions. The authoritarian practices of the government he has established have changed El Salvador no matter what the outcome of the next election.
“The government that comes to power will enter with conditions of authoritarian tendencies,” Lindo-Fuentes says. “[As a result] there will be a deterioration of civil liberties, of respect for human rights, and of legal certainty.”
As Bukele has taken steps to consolidate power around himself, he has also sought to find favor with far-right Republicans in the United States, while he has faced increasing criticism from Democrats.
“Some of the measures taken [by El Salvador] during the state of exception contradict established human rights norms,” Emily Mendrala, deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, testified in a special hearing about human rights abuses during El Salvador’s State Emergency, which was convened by the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Bukele’s lobbying efforts in the United States have found him allies with the same Republicans who helped the closure of the United Nations-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala.
“In private exchanges with the government of El Salvador, the Department [of State] has stressed the importance of respect for human rights, including guarantees of a fair trial,” Mendrala said. “In a democracy, all those accused of crimes must face a transparent justice system.”
Bukele’s lobbying efforts in the United States have found him allies with the same Republicans who helped the closure of the United Nations-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, commonly known as CICIG, during a campaign of disinformation in 2019. Among these was Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who traveled to El Salvador in March 2023, where he expressed his amazement of Bukele’s success in violently rooting out gangs.
By Office of U.S. National Security Advisor/public domain
President-elect Nayib Bukele and U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton in March 2019.
But Rubio’s support for Bukele hides the complexity of the political situation in Latin America and, more specifically, how the Bukele administration has approached foreign policy. As Bukele has sought to grow close to Republicans in the United States who have also shown their authoritarian tendencies, he has continued to maintain close relationships with China and expressed his refusal to condemn Valdimir Putin in Russia.
At the end of the day, Bukele has sought to forge alliances with governments that will not criticize his concentration of power or his assault on human rights. Like others in Latin America, the Bukele government has sought to maintain relationships with Republicans who aim to return to the policies of the Trump Administration.
“With the Trump Administration, [Bukele and his people] have found an accomplice,” Ricardo Castaneda, a Salvadoran economist with the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies, previously told The Progressive. “If Trump were to run again and win, a national holiday would be declared [in El Salvador].”