GNV News 2025/8/8

On 2025/7/31, El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly approved, through a rapid process lacking public participation and sufficient debate, a package of constitutional reforms to the political and electoral system, including abolishing limits on presidential re-election, extending the term from 5 to 6 years, and eliminating the 2nd-round runoff. Behind this haste were, among other things, the simplification of the constitutional amendment procedure in 2024/5—which changed the previous requirement of approval by the legislature in 2 successive terms to approval with just 1 legislative vote—and the fact that the ruling Nuevas Ideas party led by President Nayib Bukele holds about 90% of the Assembly’s seats and, buoyed by high popular support, has been promoting authoritarian legal and constitutional changes.

For many years, El Salvador was known as the “murder capital of the world,” and in 2019 Bukele won the presidential election with 52% of the vote, positioning himself as an alternative to the traditional right and left that had failed to address poverty and gang-driven insecurity. Bukele is a politician who skillfully deploys extensive media strategies, and in 2021 his Nuevas Ideas party won far more than a simple majority of seats in the legislature. This made it possible to replace judges and prosecutors critical of him, severely undermining judicial independence. Regarding the constitutional changes now in focus, such as extending the presidential term, judges appointed by his party reinterpreted the law, making it possible for the president to run again.

In 2022/3, a state of emergency that remains in effect to this day was declared, ushering in Bukele’s hardline security measures and governance. As a result, the homicide rate reportedly fell sharply from 106 per 100,000 people in 2015. While the improved security boosted Bukele’s popularity among the public, at the same time certain fundamental human rights were suspended, and serious human rights violations became widespread, including arbitrary detention, repression, and expulsion of human rights defenders and critics, and suppression of freedom of expression.

These constitutional revisions and the concentration of power are similar to the institutional changes that occurred in the past in Venezuela and Nicaragua, and observers warn of the danger that a popular leader may gradually weaken democratic mechanisms and move toward a dictatorship. The spread of authoritarian procedures that, without sufficient deliberation, deprive citizens of opportunities for participation—together with human rights violations—has been criticized by civil society and opposition parties as “the death of democracy,” and has also been flagged by international human rights organizations, but Bukele has pushed back against this.

Learn more about the decline in El Salvador’s homicide rate → “El Salvador: Homicides halved in just one year”

Learn more about Latin American politics where a shift from democracy to authoritarianism is a concern → “Challenges facing politics and society in Latin America”

President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador (Photo: Casa Presidencial El Salvador / Wikimedia Commons [CC0 1.0])