Everything indicates that next Sunday, February 4, Nayib Bukele will become the first Salvadoran president to be re-elected since the arrival of democracy in the Central American country in 1992. This is an unusual event, not only because of Bukele’s massive support, which enjoys around 80% voting intention according to different surveys. But because numerous experts denounce that his candidacy violates several articles of the Salvadoran Constitution, where immediate re-election is prohibited.
Nayib Bukele’s victory in the 2019 presidential elections ended the bipartisanship of ARENA and the FMLN, the former guerrilla of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front. Since the democratic transition in the 90s, these two parties had taken turns in the government of El Salvador. But the real turning point came in 2021 when Nuevas Ideas (NI), Bukele’s party, swept the legislative elections, obtaining a qualified majority that would allow him to approve laws he wanted without having to negotiate with other political groups.
Once Parliament was dominated by Bukele’s Executive, the majority of NI voted for the dismissal of the five members of the Supreme Court and the Attorney General, who would be replaced by judges favorable to the new president. Internal opponents and international organizations denounced the legal irregularities of this movement. But nothing prevented the new Court from issuing a controversial ruling that now allows the president to circumvent the constitutional prohibition on re-election.
Álvaro Artiga González, professor of Political Science at the “José Simeón Cañas” Central American University (UCA) of El Salvador, explained to this newspaper that Bukele’s almost certain re-election will generate discomfort in the international community because “they are going to have to accept and recognize to a president elected unconstitutionally, but who enjoys legitimacy that comes from popular support,” declared Artiga.
With 90% approval, Bukele is the most popular president in Latin America, according to a Latinobarómetro survey published in August 2023. The average for the region is 40%. The key to his popularity: a drastic reduction in insecurity in El Salvador. Homicides went from 106 per 100,000 people in 2015 to only eight in 2022.
“People are willing to lose civil and political rights, which the majority do not even exercise because they do not get involved in politics, do not organize, or express themselves politically,” explains Professor Artiga. “They have gained a security that they did not have before, they prefer to be able to walk calmly down the street than that more ethereal thing that is democracy,” adds the expert on Salvadoran politics.
The protection of security achievements is precisely the number one argument in Bukele’s call to vote. In every advertising break in the state media, we hear the president repeat the importance of voting in the presidential and legislative elections, which are held simultaneously on February 4. “With just one less representative we would lose the majority and put the war against the gangs at risk, because the emergency regime could not be approved,” Bukele announces to viewers.
A regime that since March 27, 2022 has suspended constitutional guarantees such as the right to defense of detained persons, the inviolability of telecommunications or the maximum provisional detention period of 72 hours. This has facilitated the arrest of more than 73,000 alleged gang members.
These measures have led to “widespread violations of human rights, including mass arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances, mistreatment in prison, and violations of due process,” according to the NGO Human Rights Watch in its 2024 annual report.
Faced with Bukele’s media bombardment, the presence of the opposition in the electoral campaign has been minimal since they have not received the financing that the State must provide according to the Constitution. In addition, the Congress controlled by the ruling party approved a series of legal reforms, such as the reduction of seats in Congress and the change in the formula for assigning them.
According to various surveys, these changes would lead to Nuevas Ideas (NI) retaining almost all of the deputies, leaving the opposition with one or two. We would be facing the “most unequal elections since the end of the military dictatorship in 1984,” according to Observa El Salvador 2024, a group of organizations and universities formed to monitor the elections.