President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele on Sunday registered his pre-candidacy for the 2027 presidential elections — seeking to obtain a third consecutive term after lawmakers from his New Ideas (NI) party eliminated term limits last year.
“We’re ready,” Xavier Zablah Bukele, President Bukele’s cousin and head of the NI party wrote on social media. He accompanied the text with a photo of the pre-candidacy applications of President Bukele and Vice President Félix Ulloa. “Pre-candidacy” is a candidate status in much of Latin America prior to the official nomination of a candidate by a party or the official campaign period.
For over a century, and until recently, El Salvador’s constitution contained clauses that either forbade a president from being reelected or forbade a president from serving in consecutive terms, requiring a period of absence from the office to run again.
When Bukele was first elected president in 2019, the Salvadoran constitution explicitly forbade a president from being immediately reelected. The constitution contained provisions to strip Salvadorans of their citizen rights should they attempt to “subscribe acts, proclamations or adhesions to promote or support the reelection or continuation of the President of the Republic, or use direct means to that end.”
The Salvadoran top court — whose top justice pro-Bukele lawmakers in Congress replaced in 2021 — issued a controversial interpretation of the nation’s constitution that allowed Bukele to run again for president in 2024 by means of a legal loophole that saw Bukele resign from the presidency on November 30, 2024 — exactly six months before the end of his 2019-2024 term.
President Bukele was freely but controversially reelected by an overwhelming majority of the Salvadoran electorate in 2024 — a victory largely attributed to Bukele’s nationwide crackdown on El Salvador’s deadly gangs such as MS-13 and 18th Street. The crackdown on the deadly gangs has contributed to Bukele’s high approval ratings among the nation’s citizens, measured at 87.8 percent as of last week according to local outlets.
Bukele carried out the crackdown through exceptional powers granted to the executive by a “state of emergency” decree originally approved in March 2022 and that has been continuously renewed through time on a monthly basis. At press time, the state of emergency decree has been renewed every month for the past 52 months, with Salvadoran lawmakers approving the most recent renewal last week.
The Salvadoran president’s path to a potential third term was cleared by the Salvadoran Congress’ overwhelming New Ideas majority last year through constitutional reforms eliminating the presidential term limits and extending the duration of presidential terms from five to six years — effectively allowing Bukele to repeatedly run for president.
As part of a transitory measure, Bukele’s current term, which was slated to conclude in 2029, was changed to prematurely end on 2027. This move allowed for the presidential election to align with municipal and legislative ones. As a result, El Salvador is scheduled to hold its next general elections on February 28, 2027.
President Bukele has not publicly commented on his pre-candidacy registration at press time. Over the past several days, the Salvadoran president has focused his social media content on publishing footage and updates on the life-saving actions of El Salvador’s rescue team sent to Venezuela following the dual earthquakes last week that left at least 1,450 dead and thousands injured, according to the most recent update from Venezuelan authorities.
“Thank you, Nayib, thank you, Xavi, thank you, Nuevas Ideas, for this new opportunity to continue contributing to the wonderful project of transforming our country,” Vice President Ulloa wrote on social media in response to Xavier Zablah Bukele.
“Decades and centuries of unfulfilled dreams are beginning to come true. Our wise and patient people know this and stand with us,” he continued.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.