El Salvador approves indefinite presidential reelection and extends
terms to 6 years
[August 01, 2025]
By MARCOS ALEMÁN
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — The party of El Salvador President
Nayib Bukele approved constitutional changes in the country’s
Legislative Assembly on Thursday that will allow indefinite presidential
reelection and extend presidential terms to six years.
Lawmaker Ana Figueroa from the New Ideas party had proposed the changes
to five articles of the constitution. The proposal also included
eliminating the second round of the election where the two top
vote-getters from the first round face off.
New Ideas and its allies in the Legislative Assembly quickly approved
the proposals with the supermajority they hold. The vote passed with 57
in favor and three opposed.
Bukele overwhelmingly won reelection last year despite a constitutional
ban, after Supreme Court justices selected by his party ruled in 2021 to
allow reelection to a second five-year term.
Observers have worried that Bukele had a plan to consolidate power since
at least 2021, when a newly elected Congress with a strong governing
party majority voted to remove the magistrates of the constitutional
chamber of the Supreme Court. Those justices had been seen as the last
check on the popular president.
Since then, Bukele has only grown more popular. The Biden
administration's initial expressions of concern gave way to quiet
acceptance as Bukele announced his run for reelection. With the return
of U.S. President Donald Trump to the White House in January, Bukele had
a new powerful ally and quickly offered Trump help by taking more than
200 deportees from other countries into a newly built prison for gang
members.
Figueroa argued Thursday that federal lawmakers and mayors can already
seek reelection as many times as they want.
“All of them have had the possibility of reelection through popular
vote, the only exception until now has been the presidency,” Figueroa
said.
She also proposed that Bukele’s current term, scheduled to end June 1,
2029, instead finish June 1, 2027, to put presidential and congressional
elections on the same schedule. It would also allow Bukele to seek
reelection to a longer term two years earlier.
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El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele gives a press conference in San
Salvador, El Salvador, Jan. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez,
File)
Marcela Villatoro of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena),
one of three votes against the proposals, told her fellow lawmakers
that “Democracy in El Salvador has died!”
“You don't realize what indefinite reelection brings: It brings an
accumulation of power and weakens democracy ... there's corruption
and clientelism because nepotism grows and halts democracy and
political participation,” she said.
Suecy Callejas, the assembly's vice president, said that “power has
returned to the only place that it truly belongs ... to the
Salvadoran people.”
Bukele did not immediately comment.
Bukele, who once dubbed himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” is
highly popular, largely because of his heavy-handed fight against
the country’s powerful street gangs.
Voters have been willing to overlook evidence that his
administration like others before it had negotiated with the gangs,
before seeking a state of emergency that suspended some
constitutional rights and allowed authorities to arrest and jail
tens of thousands of people.
His success with security and politically has inspired imitators in
the region who seek to replicate his style.
Most recently, Bukele's government has faced international criticism
for the arrests of high-profile lawyers who have been outspoken
critics of his administration. One of the country's most prominent
human rights group announced in July it was moving its operations
out of El Salvador for the safety of its people, accusing the
government of a “wave of repression.”
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