El Salvador’s parliament has scrapped the presidential term limits, paving the way for President Nayib Bukele to remain in office indefinitely, as per media reports.
The controversial move allows Bukele to seek an additional term beyond that previously allowed under the country’s constitution.
The constitutional amendment passed on Thursday by President Bukele’s ruling New Ideas party, which holds a majority in Congress, paves the way for indefinite presidential re-election, increases term lengths from five to six years, and eliminates runoff elections.
Notably, despite a constitutional ban on immediate presidential re-election in El Salvador, the country’s top court, which was reconstituted in 2021 by a Congress dominated by President Nayib Bukele’s pro-government party, ruled that Bukele has the fundamental right to seek a second consecutive term.
Bukele, 44, enjoys one of the highest favorability ratings in the region, regularly polling above 70 per cent in independent surveys.
His supporters laud his crackdown on criminal gangs in the country, which has resulted in a dramatic drop in the murder rate, which was once one of the highest in the world.
But mass arrests — El Salvador now has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world — have also drawn the ire of human rights groups, who allege that Bukele’s government is detaining innocent people and subjecting prisoners to inhumane conditions behind bars, including torture, according to CNN.
Bukele doesn’t shy away from comparisons to autocratic rulers — he once dubbed his biography “the world’s quietest dictator” on Twitter — and his government has been said to be “eroding” democracy in the country, CNN reported.
El Salvador’s constitution bars presidents from running for reelection. But the country’s Congress replaced the top Supreme Court justices in 2021 with a new class willing to give them power.
The so-called “Bukele method” has quickly become part of Latin American security policy, with presidents of both Honduras and Ecuador clearing the way for mass arrests to curb rising gang violence in their countries, as reported by CNN.
According to a survey conducted in 2023 by Latinobarómetro, in at least 13 countries in Latin America, the majority of the population “would not mind an undemocratic government coming to power if it could solve the problems”.
