Bukele going for re-election, what does the Constitution and the Constitutional Council say?

(CNN Spanish) – Without saying how he would do it, the President of El Salvador, Neb Bukele, announced his presidency Presidential re-election ambition for 2024A measure that drew criticism from his opponents and is, according to many, a violation of the national constitution.

With his announcement, Bukele, who was elected president in 2019, and is highly popular, sparked a rejection from the opposition, which says the president concentrated public powers, and after his announcement they said he was born. “The Right to Intifada”.

But what does the Constitution and the Constitutional Chamber say about the re-election?

In the first place, the possibility that his representative will register as a candidate for the presidency of the republic for the year 2024, was born from a ruling issued by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, which stipulated in May 2021 the continuation of the decision of the president in office. It is the responsibility of the voters. It must be borne in mind that the Constitutional Chamber is elected by the Legislative Assembly by an official majority.

Constitutional Chamber He said in his punishment The fact that the President once again competed for this position “means only that the person who is currently holding the presidency will have among the people’s choice of options”, that is, the Chamber said that he will not necessarily be re-elected.

“Then what the said clause seeks to protect is that this ‘permanence’ is preceded by free and equal elections, which is why a president seeking a second term must necessarily be subject to electoral competition like the other candidates, in order to be such people who have finally decided elect him or choose a different political option,” The ruling of the Constitutional Chamber says Released in 2021.

After this ruling, El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), also in 2021, stated that You will abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court He said that the decisions of the highest court are “non-appealable and mandatory.”

The new judges in the ruling state that in order to prevent a president who chooses to be re-elected from taking office, he must leave it six months before the start of the new term. At that time, according to the sentence, the position will be taken over by the Vice President.

What does El Salvador’s constitution say about re-election?

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.

Furthermore, Article 88 of the Constitution of El Salvador states that rotation in the exercise of the presidency is essential to maintaining the form of government and political system. The constitution states that “violation of this standard enforces rebellion.”

But for the judges of the Constitutional Chamber, this article is not violated with the possible participation of Bukele in a new election. In fact, Article 88 would be violated if “the intent is to cancel the electoral phase, and to strip the people of their right to decide who they want to represent,” as stated in the sentence.

“This Article cannot be construed where the people are compelled to give up the possibility of being re-elected as a president elected in a previous election, when the same Article 152 ordinal 1 permits a maximum of one person to exercise the presidency for a term of 10 years. In fact, the 1983 Constituent Assembly requires the exercise of Those ten years, if the people so decided in a row,” as stated in the ruling of the Constitutional Court.

Although Article 154 of the Constitution stipulates that the term of office in El Salvador is five years… “without the person who assumed the presidency being able to continue in office even for one more day,” the court said in its ruling last year that what this article guarantees It is “to hold periodic elections so that the people always have the opportunity to decide every five years whether they want to change their political ideology or if they want the same political party to continue in the presidency.”

Furthermore, he adds, Article 154 specifically prevents the president from “imposing himself without previous elections.”

So far, Bukele has not said how he would become a candidate as stipulated in the constitution, which has not been reformed despite approval by the Constitutional Chamber, while social organizations have come forward. They will keep the protests in the streetsrefused to immediately re-elect the president.