El Salvador's president registers for reelection despite constitutional objections

El Salvador's president has registered for reelection in next February’s contest even though legal experts and opposition figures who say the country’s constitution prohibits it

Central American and Caribbean Games (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele registered for reelection in next year's contest, his party announced Monday, despite objections from legal experts and opposition figures who say the country’s constitution prohibits his candidacy.

Bukele’s New Ideas party announced his registration and that of Vice President Felix Ulloa via Twitter Monday.

“New Ideas are invincible,” the party wrote.

Bukele is popular in El Salvador but considered controversial internationally. He announced in September that he planned to seek a second five-year term. That came after the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, handpicked by his supporters in congress, ruled in 2021 that his candidacy for reelection was permitted and ordered the electoral court to allow it.

Constitutional lawyers, however, have maintained that Bukele’s candidacy would violate at least four articles of the constitution, including article 154, which states: “The presidential term will be five years and will begin and end on June 1, without the person who has held the presidency being able to continue in their functions even one more day.”

But Bukele maintains approval ratings above 80%. He led a crackdown on the country’s powerful street gangs that has landed more than 60,000 people in jail on suspicion of gang ties.

Despite suspending some fundamental rights for more than year, the measures have been widely popular. Communities that lived under the constant extortion and violence of the gangs are returning to life.