El Salvador approves indefinite presidential reelection, extends presidential phrases to six years : NPR

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Salvador Melendez/AP SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — The get together of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele accredited constitutional modifications within the nation's Nationwide Meeting on Thursday that can permit indefinite presidential reelection and lengthen presidential phrases to 6 years.

Lawmaker Ana Figueroa from the New Concepts get together had proposed the modifications to 5 articles of the structure. The proposal additionally included eliminating the second spherical of the election the place the 2 high vote-getters from the primary spherical face off.

New Concepts and its allies within the Nationwide Meeting shortly accredited the proposals with the supermajority they maintain. The vote handed with 57 in favor and three opposed.

Bukele overwhelmingly received reelection final 12 months regardless of a constitutional ban, after Supreme Courtroom justices chosen by his get together dominated in 2021 that it allowed reelection to a second five-year time period.

Figueroa argued Thursday that federal lawmakers and mayors can already search reelection as many occasions as they need.

"All of them have had the opportunity of reelection via common vote, the one exception till now has been the presidency," Figueroa mentioned.

She additionally proposed that Bukele's present time period, scheduled to finish June 1, 2029, as a substitute end June 1, 2027, to place presidential and congressional elections on the identical schedule. It could additionally permit Bukele to hunt reelection to a long run two years earlier.

Marcela Villatoro of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Enviornment), one in all three votes in opposition to the proposals, advised her fellow lawmakers that "Democracy in El Salvador has died!"

"You do not understand what indefinite reelection brings: It brings an accumulation of energy and weakens democracy ... there's corruption and clientelism as a result of nepotism grows and halts democracy and political participation," she mentioned.

Suecy Callejas, the meeting's vice chairman, mentioned that "energy has returned to the one place that it actually belongs ... to the Salvadoran folks."

Bukele didn't instantly remark.

Bukele, who as soon as dubbed himself "the world's coolest dictator," is very common, largely due to his heavy-handed combat in opposition to the nation's highly effective road gangs.

Voters have been keen to miss proof that his administration like others earlier than it had negotiated with the gangs, earlier than looking for a state of emergency that suspended some constitutional rights and allowed authorities to arrest and jail tens of hundreds of individuals.