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It’s Complicated: Election Observers Say Nayib Bukele Won Fairly, but in ‘Unprecedented’ Situation
The Organization of American States (OAS) recognized the results of El Salvador’s recent presidential election in which President Nayib Bukele was reelected for five years — making special note of the unprecedented circumstances that allowed Bukele to successfully run for reelection.
OAS also expressed concerns over the power accrued by the ruling government.
In its preliminary report, the OAS electoral mission that observed Sunday’s presidential election described the event as calm and peaceful, with the electorate heading to the polls “en masse and without coercion” and leaving “no doubts” over the results.
The election saw Bukele attain an overwhelming victory and secure an unprecedented reelection with over 85 percent of the votes cast. His Party, Nuevas Ideas (NI), obtained 58 out 60 Congress seats, effectively establishing a one-party rule in El Salvador.
While the OAS mission highlighted that “the wide gap between the winning candidate and his opponents leaves no doubt about the election results,” it stressed concerns over the circumstances of the election itself, which, according to the report, included a certain “inequity in the contest.”
“The elections were held under unprecedented conditions for El Salvador. One of the main reasons is that this is the first election held under a regime of exception since the signing of the 1992 Peace Accords,” the report read. “The second reason is that, for the first time since the 1983 National Constitution came into force, an incumbent president is running for a second immediate presidential term.”
Several articles in El Salvador’s constitution contain provisions that explicitly forbid a president from seeking reelection, heavily penalizing those who attempt it with a complete loss of citizen rights.
Bukele was able to run and secure a new immediate presidential term thanks to a legal loophole granted by a controversial interpretation of Article 152 of the Salvadoran constitution issued by the Supreme Court of Justice in 2021 – months after all of its top Justices had been replaced by the pro-Bukele majority in Congress.
The interpretation of the article states that a sitting president would be able to run again so long as he or she resigns six months before the end of their five-year term. Bukele’s current term is set to end in June 2024. Bukele “stepped down” from the presidency on November 30 in order to comply with the ruling, leaving his personal secretary Claudia Juana Rodríguez de Guevara as figurehead president until the start of Bukele’s second term.
The OAS observation mission recalled that the replacement of the court’s top justices was rejected by the OAS General Secretariat and by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights “for considering that the constitutional norms that regulate the procedure and the Inter-American standards for the removal of justice operators had not been complied with.”
The Mission also mentioned the current state of exception decree as another of the “unprecedented conditions.”
El Salvador has been under a de-facto state of martial law since March 2022 to combat the once-out-of-control gang violence in the country. The decree, which originally lasted 30 days, has been continuously extended since then and will soon mark its second year.
Although the state of exception decree has restricted several civil liberties such as freedom of association, it has allowed for a dramatic reduction in gang violence and crime and the “virtual disappearance” of the nation’s most dangerous gangs, such as Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and 18th Street.
“Various actors with whom the Mission met expressed concern about the repeated extension of the emergency regime, which in their opinion undermines its temporary nature,” the report stated.
“The Salvadoran government, for its part, stated that, despite improvements in security indicators, especially in the homicide rate, there are still a large number of gang members who must be captured, which in its opinion still justifies maintaining the exception regime,” the report continued.
Lastly, the OAS observation mission expressed concerns over the amount of power accumulated by Bukele and the overwhelming number of seats secured in the New Ideas party in Congress, which effectively places El Salvador under one-party rule for the next five years:
Preliminary official results so far show a wide advantage of presidential candidate Nayib Bukele over his opponents. Likewise, according to the polls presented, the political party Nuevas Ideas would obtain a supermajority in the Legislative Assembly which, if confirmed, would provide the President of the Republic with mandate possibilities that require a responsible and deeply democratic exercise. This will be decisive to guarantee the future of democracy in El Salvador.
The report concluded by stressing that both the Inter-American Democratic Charter and judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have established the need to respect the separation of powers.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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