The court approves the registration of Nayib Bukele’s candidacy

He Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) of El Salvador he agreed to declare his presidential candidacy this Friday Nayib Bukele by the New Idea (NI) party to seek immediate re-election in February 2024, despite demands to reject it and accusations of unconstitutionality.

The electoral body reported on its official X account (formerly Twitter) that the decision to register the NI formula, which consists of Bukele and his vice president, Félix Ulloa, received 4 votes from the 5 judges that make up this body.

Bukele thus becomes the first president of the Salvadoran democratic era to become a candidate for immediate re-election, the latest precedent to occur under a military dictatorship with Maximiliano Hernández Martínez in 1935.

Other candidacies

The Electoral Court stated in the same publication that the presidential formula is an opponent and a former guerrilla National Liberation Front Farabundo Martí (FMLN, left), led by Manuel Flores.

“The collegial body agreed with 5 votes to register the presidential formula of the FMLN party; to register with four votes and one abstention of judge Julio Oliva, the presidential formula of the Nuevas Ideas party, after confirming that they meet the legal requirements. Other prohibitions of the formula need to be corrected” , the message states.

Bukele realized his intention to run again on October 26, a few minutes before the deadline and with dozens of his followers waiting outside the headquarters of the Electoral Court.

“The Salvadoran people will decide if they want to continue building a new El Salvador or if they want to go back to the past (…) we will, with God’s help, bury that opposition, for that we have to search all the polls,” he said. Then the president made a statement accompanied by heavy security.

Votes for and against

The TSE’s approval of Bukele’s candidacy, which he announced in September 2021 he would file, came hours after civil movement lawyers and opposition parliamentary candidates presented demands to disqualify the president.

The path to Bukele’s re-election is open in 2021, when the Sala de los Constitutional Court of the Supreme Courtwho was appointed without a legal procedure by the opposition-majority Congress, changed the criteria for interpreting the Constitution.

The judges, who the US accuses of being “loyal” to the Bukele executive, and who include former advisers and ex-lawyers of high-ranking officials, pointed out that the ban on immediate re-election for a ruler who has been in power for 10 years.

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

According to the candidate for deputy David EliasThe “order” issued by the Constitutional Council is not valid, considering that the said council is currently made up of “usurpers”.

Various lawyers, civil organizations and the Faculty of Justice and Social Sciences of the State University of El Salvador (UES) argue that Direct re-election of the president is prohibited in at least 6 articles of the Salvadoran constitution.

On the other hand, the interpretations of analysts related to the ruling party say that Bukele must leave the Presidency on December 1 of the current year, six months before the end of his mandate at the head of the executive branch.

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

After becoming Salvadoran president in 2019, Bukele described Juan Orlando Hernández and Daniel Ortega as “dictators,” who could be re-elected in Honduras and Nicaragua, respectively, thanks to constitutional court resolutions.