According to multiple reports, lawmakers in El Salvador approved constitutional changes in the country’s National Assembly that will allow indefinite presidential reelection and extend presidential terms to six years, allowing President Nayib Bukele to run an unlimited number of times.

The National Assembly, where Bukele’s party holds a supermajority, announced the constitutional changes on social media.

Translated:

#Plenaria66 | Supported by 57 signatures, Deputy @anamag_figueroa proposed amending articles 75, 80, 133, 152, and 154 of the Constitution, regarding the following points:

✅ Standardize the presidential election to the modality of other popularly elected positions

With this, we eliminate restrictions on citizens’ rights, so that they decide how long to support, or not, the work of a president.

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✅ Extend the presidential term to six years

This aims to stabilize electoral periods, reducing costs and increasing legal certainty, in order to attract investment, greater economic and social development, as well as avoid a permanent electoral campaign.

France 24 provided coverage:

More from The New York Times:

First elected in 2019, Mr. Bukele won a landslide re-election in 2024, riding his enormous popularity for decimating the gangs. He was able to do so in part by declaring a state of emergency that allowed authorities to carry out mass arrests with no due process. Tens of thousands of people were jailed, and rights groups say many of them had no ties to the gangs.

This year, Mr. Bukele’s government has escalated a crackdown on civil society groups who have been critical of his tactics. Under the state of emergency, which was extended for the 40th time last month, he has gone after dissidents, carrying out arrests that have prompted some civil rights advocates and journalists to flee.

Under Mr. Bukele, 44, El Salvador has become one of the safest countries in the region, and the president has dismissed accusations that he has embraced authoritarian tactics.

“I don’t care if they call me a dictator,” he said in June. “I would rather be called ‘dictator’ than watch them kill Salvadorans in the streets.”

Mr. Bukele has also positioned himself as President Trump’s closest partner in Latin America, playing a role in Mr. Trump’s deportation plans by imprisoning people expelled from the United States. In exchange, Mr. Bukele’s government has received around $5 million and has sought the return to El Salvador of many top leaders of the MS-13 gang in U.S. custody.

“With this initiative, we open a new chapter in the democratic history of El Salvador. It will be the people who decide, as many times as they wish, whether to continue supporting the path of transformation our nation is experiencing,” said Ana Figueroa, the lawmaker who proposed the amendments.

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Further details from the Associated Press:

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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