Legislation allows rightwing president Nayib Bukele to seek unlimited terms, sparking fears of dictatorship

Activists and opposition leaders have that warned El Salvador is following Venezuela’s path towards dictatorship after the Central American country’s congress scrapped presidential term limits, paving the way for Nayib Bukele to seek indefinite re-election.

“Democracy in El Salvador has died,” opposition congresswoman Marcela Villatoro declared late on Thursday as the legislature – in which Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party controls 90% of seats – approved the highly controversial constitutional reform, by 57 votes to three.

Villatoro accused fellow lawmakers of dealing a “death blow” to the country’s democratic system during the late-night session. “Today some people applaud this. Tomorrow they will regret it,” she said, comparing El Salvador’s slide into authoritarianism to the collapse of Venezuela’s democracy.

“When all the orders come from one person and everything revolves around one single person, democracy no longer exists. And when you lose democracy … it takes years to get it back,” Villatoro warned.

Loyalists of Bukele – a social media-savvy 44-year-old who once called himself “the world’s coolest dictator” – celebrated the reforms, which will also see presidential terms extended from five years to six and bring the presidential election scheduled for 2029 forward to 2027. The election’s second round will also be scrapped.

Suecy Callejas, one of 54 Nuevas Ideas lawmakers in El Salvador’s 60-seat assembly, tweeted: “The constitution isn’t untouchable. What should be untouchable is the WILL of the people. And today, more than ever, the people are at the centre of our decisions.”

Bukele, who is one of Donald Trump’s top Latin American allies, was first elected in 2019 and was re-elected last year thanks to widespread public support for his hardline crackdown on gangs, which has seen homicide rates plummet.

That three-year clampdown has seen 2% of El Salvador’s adult population jailed and due process suspended, and made Bukele a role model for rightwing Latin American politicians grappling with high crime rates, and members of Trump’s Maga movement.

But Bukele’s concentration of power has horrified opposition politicians and activists. Juanita Goebertus, Human Rights Watch’s Americas director, compared El Salvador’s scrapping of presidential term limits to Venezuela’s 2009 referendum which approved the same measure under its then populist president Hugo Chávez.

Sixteen years later, Chávez’s heir, Nicolás Maduro, remains in power, having claimed a third term last year despite apparently losing the July 2024 election. “[El Salvador is] traveling down the same path as Venezuela,” Goebertus warned. “It starts with a leader who uses his popularity to concentrate power, and it ends in dictatorship.”

In a rare interview with the foreign media last year, Bukele said he would not seek re-election, citing the constitutional “prohibition” which was this week removed. “Also, we have an agreement with my wife that this is my last term,” Bukele told Time magazine, musing that he might write a book after leaving power.

Few believe Bukele will honour that pledge. “Welcome to the club of the authoritarian dictatorships of Maduro, [Daniel] Ortega, [Miguel] Díaz Canel,” tweeted Carlos Fernando Chamorro, a prominent Nicaraguan journalist forced into exile because of his country’s democratic decline.

Source: www.theguardian.com