El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly approved changes to the country’s constitution on Thursday that will extend presidential terms from five years to six and abolish term limits. That means President Nayib Bukele, a far-right crypto enthusiast who’s allied with President Donald Trump, could potentially stay in power for the rest of his natural life.
First elected in 2019 on a promise to crack down on gangs, Bukele was supposed to be prohibited from running for re-election in 2024. But the country’s Supreme Court of Justice ruled in 2021 that one of the articles in El Salvador’s constitution allows a president to run for re-election once. Bukele’s New Ideas Party removed magistrates in the Supreme Court who had opposed the president, clearing the path for Bukele to rule the country with an iron fist and make any constitutional changes necessary to remain in power indefinitely.
Bukele was re-elected in 2024 under those extremely dubious circumstances, and his term was scheduled to end on June 1, 2029. But lawmaker Ana Figueroa from the New Ideas Party has suggested moving up Bukele’s re-election to June 1, 2027, to put it more in line with congressional elections, according to the Associated Press. With the new changes and Bukele’s popularity, it would presumably allow the president to consolidate even more power now that he could be re-elected again and again, both without term limits and for a longer term each time.
The vote to strip term limits for the president and extend the length of each term passed by 57 to 3. And one of the three dissenters, Marcela Villatoro of the Nationalist Republican Alliance, warned that democracy would be weakened with the changes, according to the AP.
“You don’t realize what indefinite reelection brings: It brings an accumulation of power and weakens democracy … there’s corruption and clientelism because nepotism grows and halts democracy and political participation,” Villatoro is quoted as saying in an English language translation.
Bukele, a fan of Elon Musk and frequent user of X, hasn’t tweeted about the changes yet. But guys like Musk and Trump are no doubt excited that their buddy in Central America is going to get even more power. Trump met with Bukele in the White House back in April when the U.S. president was shipping migrants to the U.S. to El Salvador’s torture prison. The men sent there, some of whom have been released into Venezuela, have told horror stories about being beaten, given dirty water, and sexually assaulted.
Bukele rode into office and remains popular because he promised to crack down on gangs. But recent reporting from the country’s El Faro news outlet claims Bukele’s government signed a secret pact in 2019 with gang leaders to dial back violence in the country. Part of the deal, according to the news outlet, was providing financial incentives. Bukele has taken credit for reducing violence by insisting it’s all part of his brutally violent crackdown.
Bukele has invested his country’s money heavily in crypto, holding nearly $550 million of its foreign exchange reserves in bitcoin, according to Reuters, which amounts to about 15%. And while that may seem like a fine thing to do when bitcoin is soaring, it’s extremely risky for any government when the price of crypto is so volatile. Bukele’s government made reassurances to the International Monetary Fund that it would scale back its crypto project in exchange for a $1.4 billion bailout from the IMF. But as the Council on Foreign Relations pointed out in May, the country is still buying bitcoin.
As CoinTelegraph reported in June, El Salvador has added at least 240 BTC since Dec. 19, 2024, right after the agreement with the IMF was announced. That’s more than $27 million at the current bitcoin price, which is hovering around $114,500, near the record high of about $123,000. It’s not clear what the IMF may do since El Salvador violated its agreement, but whatever happens, the government needs to hope the price doesn’t plummet.
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