A Dictatorship Is Born [View all]

Saturday, June 1, 2024
El Faro Editorial Board

Art. 154 - The presidential term shall be five years and shall begin and end on the first day of June, without the person who has exercised the Presidency being able to continue in office for one more day.”

Constitution of the Republic of El Salvador

Nayib Bukele’s constitutional presidency has come to an end. From this day on, his permanence in power is exercised in violation of six articles of the Salvadoran Constitution.

The now de facto president and his family clan have risen above our laws to assume the throne, without any institution capable of imposing limits to their constitutional trampling. The authoritarian regime has become a dictatorship.

All the other elements of a dictatorship are present as well: control of the three branches of government; concealment of public information and lack of accountability; use of security forces and the judicial system for political ends; persecution of the opposition and critical voices; political prisoners; systematic torture in prisons; absence of rule of law; Bukele’s demand for obeisance; and a growing conviction on the part of the population that one must beg the president on social media to secure favors: the release of an unjustly imprisoned relative or redress in the face of violations by public officials.

To find a parallel in our history we must go back to 1935, when the last Salvadoran dictator to reelect himself, Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, commenced his second term against the provisions of the constitution in force at the time. It was Martínez and his advisors who invented the charade that we now see repeated nine decades later: requesting a six-month leave of absence in order to argue that his next term was not a reelection, but a second term. It is precisely the same formula used today by Bukele, under the tutelage of Vice President Félix Ulloa, and with the complicity of the Supreme Court justices. Not even that idea is new under the Bukele regime.

More:
https://elfaro.net/en/202406/opinion/27436/a-dictatorship-is-born