the Supreme Court confirmed the re-election of Nayib Bukele, the millennium president

The Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador announced on Friday that President Nayib Bukele will be able to run in the next elections in search of a second term.

By a judgment addressed to the Superior Electoral Tribunal, the constitutional chamber of the Court admitted that “a person who exercises the presidency of the Republic and who has not been president in the immediately preceding period participate in the electoral race for the second time. “

In other words, if he had been president for the period 2014-2019, he could not seek re-election for the five-year term 2024-2029.

The magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber who reinterpreted the constitution are the same as those who were appointed on May 1, after the ruling Legislative Assembly dismissed the five magistrates who composed it, as well as Attorney General Raúl Melara.

The resolution of the new magistrates was given in response to a process of “loss of citizenship rights” promoted last February by constitutionalist Salvador Enrique Anaya, after elected deputy Nanci Díaz promote the presidential re-election.

Lawyer Anaya based his request on Article 75 of the Constitution, which orders the loss of citizenship rights to those who “sign deeds, proclamations or memberships to promote or support the re-election or maintenance of the President of the Republic, or directly employ means intended for this purpose ”.

Previous judges of the Constitutional Chamber have argued that Article 152 re-election prohibited of who “has held the presidency of the republic for more than six consecutive months or not, during the period immediately preceding, or during the last six months preceding the start of the presidential period”.

The above required a president will wait two periods to apply again. However, with the new reinterpretation, Bukele will be able to go in search of a new mandate.

The dismissal of the magistrates was due to the fact that this young president prevailed in the legislatures, obtaining in his favor a Congress with an allied majority to promote his administration.

The youngest in history

To concern came to power with 37 years and he became the youngest president in the history of El Salvador, hand in hand with the Grand Alliance for National Unity (Gana, conservative).

Once in government, Bukele transformed the New Ideas (NI) movement into a political party and maintains the alliance with Gana. Both obtained a majority of the votes in the legislative elections in March.

Bukele’s virtue is that “he has no commitment to any political, economic or social sector”, and that is why since 2015 he has been listed in polls as “apotheotic phenomenon“, said Francisco Zepeda, director of the Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Technology (UTEC).

With the police, he faced the citizen insecurity and mara gang activity, which has plagued the country for decades.

And he used the armed forces, both to distribute food during the pandemic and to show up with troops in the opposition parliament and lobby for approval of a loan for a security plan.

“What worries is that in these first years of Nayib government, he showed many situations that left a lot to be desired: the lack of transparency, accusations of corruption, his hateful vocabulary“said Miguel Montenegro, director of the Commission on Human Rights.

Since the campaign for the presidency, he popularized the expression “Return what has been stolenAddressed to politicians, and shouted since then by his supporters in front of the members of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena, on the right), which reigned from 1989 to 2009.

He also conducted his drums against the FMLN government, his former party, in power between 2009 and 2019, and now accuses him of abandoning public health infrastructure.