Bukele announced that he will seek re-election in 2024

(CNN in Spanish) – El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, announced Thursday that he has decided to register as a presidential candidate in 2024.

The president said during a national radio and television broadcast commemorating 201 years of independence from the Central American country.

president Tweet embed Tonight, he announced to the Salvadoran people his decision to run for president in the upcoming presidential elections in El Salvador. pic.twitter.com/M4ilsCjjXC

Presidential House 🇸🇻 (PresidenciaSV) September 16, 2022

The possibility of Bukele registering as a candidate arose from A Constitutional Chamber ruling, He was elected by the Legislative Assembly by an official majority on May 1, 2021. The justices issued a ruling on September 3 in which they affirmed that the decision to continue the president was up to the electorate.

The judges noted in the sentence that “competing again for the presidency does not actually mean that he will be elected, but only means that the people who currently hold the presidency will be among their group of options.”

A day later, El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Court stated that it would abide by the decision of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court because decisions of the highest court are “non-appealable and mandatory”.

“The people have a chance in free elections to decide,” Bukele said in his address from the presidential house, which was met with applause from officials and special guests who accompanied him, including members of the diplomatic corps accredited in the Central American country.

“Surely no more than one developed country will agree to this decision, but it is not they who will decide, but the Salvadoran people,” Bukele added.

In El Salvador, the opposition has already expressed its disapproval. And on her Twitter account, Alianza Nacional El Salvador en Paz, an organization that took to the streets of the capital’s main streets, along with other sectors, to reject, among other things, “the right to rebel is born for us”, wrote on her Twitter account. Immediate presidential re-election issues, because they consider it unconstitutional.

Article 152 of the Constitution states in its first paragraph that a person who has held the Presidency of the Republic for more than six months, consecutive or not, during the period immediately preceding, or during the preceding six months, cannot be elected to the office of President of the Republic. Presidency of the Republic at the beginning of the presidential term.

The judges decided in the ruling that in order to prevent a president seeking re-election from taking office, he must leave it six months before the start of the new term. At that time, according to the ruling, the vice president takes over the presidency.

Said Marilyn Funes, deputy for the opposition Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation.

The social organizations that took part in Thursday’s rally demanded that they keep the street protests going, rejecting the immediate presidential re-election.