A survey published this week by the Center for Citizen Studies (CEC) at the Francisco Gavidia University in El Salvador found President Nayib Bukele with an overwhelmingly ample lead towards his reelection next year – despite the country’s Constitution banning him from seeking reelection.
CEC’s survey found an overwhelming 68.4 percent of voters would choose Bukele and the ruling New Ideas (NI) Party in the upcoming election. His closest rival, Joel Sánchez of the center-right Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), only received 4.3 percent support. Manuel Flores of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) – which Bukele used to be a member of – came in third place with 2.8 percent support.
Bukele was a member of the FMLN until the leftist party expelled him in 2017 for “violating” party principles.
The survey found 9.9 percent of respondents intend to abstain from voting and 9.2 expressed their intention to cast a “null” vote. El Salvador’s Electoral Code defines a vote as “null” when its corresponding ballot was erroneously marked or altered by the voter.
CEC’s survey also projected that the New Ideas party will obtain 58 of the 60 seats of the Legislative Assembly after the Salvadoran Parliament’s pro-Bukele majority approved reducing the number of seats that form the legislative body from 84 down to 60 in June, starting with the upcoming 2024 election. The reform also eliminated a provision known as the “residual system,” which allowed legislators from minority parties to obtain seats in Congress, with new lawmakers being elected only by majority vote.
El Salvador is slated to hold a two-part general election during the first quarter of 2024. The first half, a presidential and legislative election, is scheduled for February 4, 2024, where Salvadorans will choose the next president, vice president, and all 60 deputies of the Legislative Assembly.
The other half, scheduled for March 3, will see the election of the country’s deputies for the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), a regional parliamentary body founded in 1991 and tasked with furthering human rights and international law. The regional Parliament is currently led by a representative of Nicaragua’s communist Sandinista regime, a notorious human rights violator.
While Bukele had expressed his intention to seek reelection in 2022, the New Ideas party did not officially announce Bukele’s reelection bid until June. The move remains highly controversial, as not only does El Salvador’s Constitution prohibit a president from serving more than one term, but it also heavily penalizes “those who commit 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” with a complete loss of citizen rights.
The Salvadoran Constitution also contains explicit provisions that prevent any kind of constitutional amendment or reform that would allow for a presidential reelection.
The Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador — whose top justices were replaced by the pro-Bukele majority in Congress in 2021 — issued a controversial interpretation of the constitution in September 2021 that granted Bukele a “loophole” pathway towards reelection without having to wait for two five-year presidential terms after the end of his current term before being able to run for president again.
In its ruling, the Salvadoran top court asserted that, while Article 152 of the Constitution explicitly states that a person who has held office for more than six months “during the immediately preceding period” may not be a candidate for president, the prohibition is only directed at the candidates, not the incumbent.
The ruling then contended that a sitting president is able to run for a second consecutive five-year term so long as he or she resigns six months before the end of their term. As a result, Bukele is expected to resign from the presidency at a date no later than November 30 to benefit from the court’s loophole ruling.
Bukele, who took office in 2019, will see his current term end on June 1, 2024. Bukele reasoned his decision to seek reelection in 2022 by arguing that “developed countries have reelection.”
Although opponents have heavily criticized Bukele’s reelection bid, the Salvadoran president continues to maintain high approval ratings that, in turn, have made him “the most popular president in the region.”
Bukele owes his high approval ratings largely in part to a fierce crackdown on El Salvador’s gangs, such as Mara Salvatrucha-13 (MS-13) and 18th Street, which his government has been carrying out under a “state of exception” decree continuously renewed on a monthly basis since March 2022.
VIDEO — Law and Order: El Salvador Builds “Mega Prison” to Eradicate Gangs
Presidency of the Republic of El Salvador via Storyful
The decree, which imposes borderline martial law and restricts civil liberties such as freedom of assembly, has allowed the government to conduct mass arrests of gang members and significantly reduced gang violence. Bukele claimed in May that El Salvador had logged 365 nonconsecutive days without homicides since he took office in 2019.
The reduction in violence has proven popular throughout the region, which for decades has faced rampant organized criminal violence. Polls show support for Bukele-style policies in other countries, such as Colombia. Local authorities, including the mayor of the Peruvian city of San Martín de Porres Hernán Sifuentes, have recently met with Salvadoran advisers to implement a “Bukele plan” to reduce crime and gang violence in their municipalities.
Similarly, the mayor of the Colombian city of Medellín, Daniel Quintero Calle, announced in March that the city had begun initial proceedings towards building a new jail in the same style as El Salvador’s Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT), a 40,000-bed “mega prison” inaugurated by Bukele’s administration in February.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.