El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, 44, who has been president since 2019 and was re-elected in 2024 with 85% of the vote, now holds near-total management over the nation’s establishments. File
| Picture Credit score: Reuters
El Salvador’s president on Sunday (August 3, 2025) defended a constitutional reform granting him the precise to hunt indefinite re-election, slamming critics who say it represents rising authoritarianism within the Central American nation.
“Ninety% of developed international locations permit the indefinite re-election of their head of presidency, and nobody bats a watch. However when a small, poor nation like El Salvador tries to do the identical, instantly it’s the tip of democracy,” Nayib Bukele wrote in English on X.
El Salvador’s Congress, dominated by Mr. Bukele’s New Concepts social gathering, handed the reform on Thursday (July 31, 2025). It additionally extends presidential phrases from 5 to 6 years.
Mr. Bukele, 44, who has been president since 2019 and was re-elected in 2024 with 85% of the vote, now holds near-total management over the nation’s establishments — in what the opposition calls a “dictatorship.”
He enjoys huge home assist for his powerful marketing campaign towards felony gangs, however has been sharply criticised by worldwide and native rights teams over his method.
Mr. Bukele has notably supported U.S. President Donald Trump’s deportation marketing campaign, taking in a whole lot of expelled Venezuelan migrants beneath contentious authorized grounds and housing them on the nation’s infamous CECOT penitentiary.
The constitutional reforms got here after a wave of arrests focusing on human rights defenders and authorities critics, prompting dozens of journalists and humanitarian employees to flee the nation.
One of many few opposition lawmakers within the unicameral legislature, Marcela Villatoro, criticised the reforms on Thursday (July 31, 2025), saying, “in the present day, democracy has died in El Salvador.”
Mr. Bukele argued that the adjustments introduced El Salvador into line with parliamentary programs the place the prime minister can maintain workplace indefinitely.
Critics will “rush to level out that ‘a parliamentary system isn’t the identical as a presidential one,’ as if that technicality justifies the double customary,” he wrote in his publish.
“However let’s be sincere, that’s only a pretext. As a result of if El Salvador declared itself a parliamentary monarchy with the very same guidelines because the U.Okay., Spain, or Denmark, they nonetheless wouldn’t assist it,” he added, claiming critics would “go ballistic if that occurred”.
With its reform, El Salvador joins Nicaragua and Venezuela as Latin American nations with out presidential time period limits.
Printed – August 03, 2025 08:09 pm IST
