El Salvador: electoral court agrees to register Bukele’s presidential candidacy

The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) of The Savior agreed this Friday to register the presidential candidacy of Nayib Bukele by the Novas Ideias (NI) party to seek immediate re-election in February 2024, despite requests for rejection and allegations of unconstitutionality.

The electoral body reported on its official account

Bukele thus becomes the first president of the Salvadoran democratic era to run for immediate reelection, the last precedent having occurred under the military dictatorship with Maximiliano Hernández Martínez in 1935.

Other applications

The Electoral Court indicated in the same publication that the presidential ticket of the opponent and former guerrilla of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN, left), headed by Manoel Flores.

“The Collegiate agreed with 5 votes to register the presidential formula of the FMLN party; register with four votes and one abstention from judge Julio Olivo, the presidential formula of the Nuevas Ideas party, after confirming that they meet the legal requirements. The rest of the formulas must correct preventions”, points the message.

Bukele fulfilled his intention to seek re-election on October 26, a few minutes before the deadline and with dozens of his followers waiting in front of the headquarters of the Electoral Court.

“The Salvadoran people will decide whether they want to continue building the new El Salvador or whether they want to return to the past (…) we will, with God’s help, bury this opposition, for that we will need to sweep out all the ballot boxes”The president said at the time in a statement accompanied by a strong security device.

Voices for and against

The TSE’s approval of Bukele’s candidacy, which he had announced in September 2021 that he would nominate, occurred hours after lawyers from a civil movement and candidates for opposition deputy presented requests for the president’s disqualification.

The path to Bukele’s re-election opened in 2021, when the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, appointed by the opposition majority Congress without following the legal procedure, changed a criterion for interpreting the Constitution.

The judges, accused by the United States of being “loyal” to the Bukele Executive and including former advisors and former lawyers of high-ranking officials, stressed that the ban on immediate re-election is for a ruler who has been in power for 10 years. . .

Until before this change, a president had to finish his 5-year term and wait 10 years to run again for President.

According to candidate for deputy David Elías, the “order” issued by the Constitutional Chamber is not valid, given that this Chamber is currently made up of “usurpers”.

Several lawyers, civil organizations and the Faculty of Jurisprudence and Social Sciences at the State University of El Salvador (UES) maintain that immediate presidential re-election is prohibited in at least 6 articles of the Salvadoran Constitution.

For their part, interpretations by analysts linked to the ruling party say that Bukele should leave the Presidency on December 1st of this year, six months before the end of his term as head of the Executive.

Before becoming president, Bukele stated that “in El Salvador the same person cannot be president twice in a row”.

After reaching the Salvadoran presidency in 2019, Bukele described Juan Orlando Hernández and Daniel Ortega as “dictators”, who managed to be re-elected in Honduras and Nicaragua, respectively, thanks to resolutions from constitutional courts.

Source: Elcomercio

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I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.