There are six articles of the Political Constitution of El Salvador in which it is directly or indirectly prohibited immediate re-election. Despite this, the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, seeks to compete once again as a candidate for the presidency in the 2024 elections, an aspiration that no Salvadoran president had materialized for 78 years.
The path he seeks to follow was paved by a resolution made by a group of magistrates from the Constitutional Chamber, appointed by Bukele’s allies in Congress, just a few months after dismissing the previous magistrates.
These judges, in their capacity as interpreters of the Constitution, analyzed a past sentence in which it was said that a president should finish his five-year term and wait 10 to seek the presidency again. Now, it is up to “the people” to decide whether the president should continue or, on the contrary, opt for another option, says a resolution issued on September 3, 2021.
With the power that a judicial resolution gives, Bukele announced on September 15, the day Independence was celebrated in Central America, his intention to compete again as a candidate for the presidency of El Salvador, in a scenario where there are no other politicians who equate the popularity of the president.
“The candidacy is going to be presented and that’s it. They are not going to reform the Constitution for that or anything like that. They are simply going to excuse themselves and claim that resolution, in quotes, as a justification to stay in power, ”he told the voice of americathe constitutional lawyer Enrique Anaya.
In a scenario in which the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador endorses a new presidential candidacy of Nayib Bukele, there is, for the moment, no public institution that opposes it.
For example, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which is the highest electoral authority in El Salvador, said the day after the resolution that these “and the judgments (of the Chamber) are unappealable and mandatory,” referring to the decision to open space for a continued presidential candidacy.
Bukele has on his side the resolution of the Chamber, the consent of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the majority of the Legislative Assembly and at least 86% popular approval according to some opinion polls published in recent months.
The voices against
But the two main arguments of some lawyers who are against presidential reelection it is the articles of the Constitution that prohibit it and the “illegitimacy” of the Chamber that supports re-election.
“There are six provisions in the Constitution that seek to guarantee alternation in the exercise of power. These, directly or indirectly, respond to that principle and the main one is article 152 where immediate or continuous presidential re-election is expressly prohibited. There is no question of interpretation there,” he told the voice of americathe lawyer José Marinero.
Similarly, the decision to authorize presidential reelection is an entirely “illegitimate” decision, he added, since “it comes from a court that is not “legitimately constituted.”
A position shared by Anaya, who pointed out that those who make up the Constitutional Chamber that have given the go-ahead for re-election are “usurpers who entered the Supreme Court of Justice through arms, with the Police.”
On the night of May 1, 2021, when the Salvadoran Congress, in its first session, dismissed the magistrates of the previous Constitutional Chamber and the Attorney General, the building where the previous judges worked was taken over by the National Civil Police, in an effort to prevent the entry of dismissed magistrates.
“What we have in El Salvador is the imposition of the facts by force. There is no legal application, there is no rule of law. We are in a dictatorship and it is going to be consolidated more and more”, added the constitutional lawyer.
The closest country to El Salvador that guarantees two continuous presidential terms exercised by the same person is the United States. In Central America, on the contrary, there is a tradition of rejecting re-election and international jurisprudence also delegitimizes it, he explained to the VOAthe international relations expert, Napoleón Campos.
“International jurisprudence on non-reelection delegitimizes and strips of all validity the claim of whoever wishes to be reelected in El Salvador. (…) Any proposal for re-election is clearly prohibited by the Magna Carta of El Salvador and is in turn against the development of international jurisprudence beginning with the inter-American system,” added Campos.
But what does the government say about the legality of the process?
According to Vice President Félix Ulloa, Article 152 of the Salvadoran Constitution does not prohibit continuous presidential candidacy.
In an interview with state channel 10, he said that the prohibitions for the president to be a candidate are two: that he has not held the presidency in the immediately preceding period or in the last six months.
“The immediately preceding period is the one that ended with the mandate of Sánchez Cerén (2019) (…) and another, if he (Bukele) decided that he is going to present himself as a candidate, he has to stop exercising the presidency six months before,” he said. .
Despite the hundreds of complaints about arbitrary arrests during the emergency regime or the legalization of bitcoin as a second currency, Nayib Bukele, 41, announced amid applause from officials and criticism from the international community for his drift authoritarian, seeking to be president of El Salvador for the second time.
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