Bukele assumes his second term as president of El Salvador

The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, was inaugurated this Saturday by Congress for a second consecutive term for the period 2024-2029, despite the constitutional prohibition, with broad popular support and complaints about the country’s economic situation, which The president promised to improve in this new period.

“Yes, I swear,” Bukele responded to the leader of the Legislative Assembly, Ernesto Castro, who imposed the presidential sash on him in the centenary National Palace, in an event closed to the public, broadcast on the national network and in which several leaders and heads of state, including the presidents of Argentina, Honduras, Costa Rica, Paraguay and Ecuador, as well as the prime minister of Belize.

Bukele thus becomes the first president of El Salvador’s democratic era to be re-elected for a second consecutive term, after decades of military dictatorship and a 12-year civil war (1980-1992). Various political and social actors in El Salvador have stated that they do not recognize the legality or legitimacy of Bukele’s second term because it is contrary to the Magna Carta.

85% of the votes

This former publicist of Palestinian descent undertakes this new challenge after pulverizing the opposition with 85% of the vote in the February elections, where he won almost the entire Congress (54 of 60 seats). Regular on social networks where he laughs at those who call him a “dictator”, he has the rest of the state powers in his favor, including magistrates who allowed him to seek reelection despite being prohibited in the Constitution.

The president will have even more power because deputies recently approved a reform that will make it easier for him to make constitutional changes, including, according to analysts, enabling indefinite reelection. Bukele’s great achievement is having allegedly healed the country from the “cancer” of the gangs, on which he declared “war” and built a megaprison: since March 2022, El Salvador has been living under a state of emergency that leaves 80,000 detainees without court order.

“Now, that we have fixed the most urgent thing, which was security, we are going to focus squarely on the important problems, starting with the economy,” Bukele said in his speech. “Salvadoran society is still sick, but it no longer has cancer,” he said, pointing out that “the country has already cured itself of gangs and now wants to cure itself of the bad economy.”