No fewer than six articles in El Salvador’s Constitution prohibit the immediate re-election of the president. This will not prevent the head of state, Nayib Bukele, from being re-elected hands down on Sunday February 4. When barely 30% of the polling stations had been counted, he appeared on the balcony of the national palace to proclaim himself victorious: “Today, El Salvador has broken all the records of all democracies in the history of the world!he said in front of a cheering crowd. Never has a project won with the number of votes we obtained. This is the highest percentage in history, more than 85% of the votes! »
Approximately 6.2 million Salvadorans were called to elect the president, vice-president and 60 deputies of the Legislative Assembly. Five other candidates share the remaining votes. The first of them, Manuel Flores, of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN, left), arrived far behind Mr. Bukele, with 7% of the votes, according to the first results, close to the exit polls, which gives the president winning with 87% of the votes.
Salvadorans above all praised Nayib Bukele’s iron fist policy against gangs, which pacified the country, at the cost, many civil society organizations denounce, of serious human rights violations. The country has been living under an exceptional regime since March 2022.
Only 12% of Salvadorans consider the re-election unconstitutional. “The population does not have much knowledge of constitutional law, and between this debate considered “sterile” and the improvement of security, the choice was quickly made,” underlines Oscar Picardo, director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Innovation at Francisco-Gavidia University, in San Salvador.
“Alteration of the constitutional order”
However, many constitutional experts believe that the re-election of Nayib Bukele is illegitimate. The president himself had admitted several times that immediate re-election was not possible in El Salvador. “The Constitution does not allow the same person to be president twice in a row. She can be president 80 times if she wants, but not straight away”he declared in 2013. More recently, in March 2021, he responded to the famous YouTuber Luisito Communicationwho asked him if he would seek re-election in 2024: “There is no re-election in El Salvador, and I will no longer be president at 42 [son âge actuel]. »
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