El Salvador - Politics
El Salvador is a constitutional multiparty republic with a democratically elected government. In 2019 voters elected Nayib Bukele as president for a five-year term. The election was generally free and fair, according to international observers. Municipal and legislative elections took place in February 2021 and also were considered largely free and fair by observers. Civilian authorities maintained effective control over security forces. There were reports that members of the security forces committed abuses.
On 27 March 2022, the Legislative Assembly declared a state of exception in response to the dramatic rise in homicides committed by gangs over the weekend of March 25-27. Under the state of exception, which must be renewed monthly, security forces were empowered to arrest anyone suspected of belonging to a gang or providing support to gangs. In addition, the state of exception suspended the rights to be informed immediately of the reason for detention, to legal defense during initial investigations, to privacy in conversations and correspondence, and to freedom of association. Numerous reports of arbitrary arrests, invasion of homes, unfair judicial procedures, and deaths of detainees followed the declaration. More than 52,000 persons were arrested in the first six months of the state of exception, leading to allegations of overcrowding and inhuman treatment in the prisons.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings, forced disappearances; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including censorship and threats to enforce criminal laws to limit expression; serious government corruption; lack of investigation and accountability for gender-based violence; significant barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health services; and crimes involving violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex individuals.
Criminal groups, including local and transnational gangs and narcotics traffickers, were significant perpetrators of violent crimes. They committed killings, acts of extortion, kidnapping, human trafficking, intimidation, and other threats and violence. They directed these acts against police, judicial authorities, the business community, journalists, women, and members of vulnerable populations. Authorities investigated and prosecuted such actions.
Prior to the implementation of the state of exception, major gangs controlled access to their specific territories. Gang members did not allow persons living in another gang’s area to enter their territory, even when travelling via public transportation. Gangs forced persons to present government-issued identification cards (which contain a person’s address) to determine their residence. If gang members discovered that a person lived in a rival gang’s territory, that person risked being killed, beaten, or denied entry to the territory. Bus companies paid bribes to operate within gang territories, often paying numerous fees for the different areas in which they operated. As gang activity decreased under the state of exception, freedom of movement increased.
Under the state of exception, there were regular reports that security and law enforcement officials arrested persons and did not inform their families of their whereabouts. On May 31, Cristosal, a human rights group, reported that of the 808 complaints the organization documented during the first two months of the state of exception, 65 percent involved cases in which the whereabouts of the arrestees were unknown.
Media and human rights groups reported that nongovernment-related disappearances, which they and the families of those disappeared attributed to gang violence, continued to occur on a regular basis. The government reported varying numbers of disappearances and sporadically declined to provide media with numbers and additional data on disappearances, often claiming the statistics were classified.
The leading forensic expert in the Prosecutor’s Office had acknowledged on several occasions that if a person spent more than eight days missing, there was a high probability the person had been killed and buried in a clandestine grave. On 16 May 2022, officials from the Attorney General’s Office and PNC told family members of the disappeared they had suspended investigations into disappearances because they were prioritizing activities supporting the state of exception.Prison conditions worsened during the state of exception. The number of prisoners more than doubled within several months of the beginning of the state of exception, leading to allegations of gross overcrowding, inadequate sanitary conditions, food shortages, a lack of medical services in prison facilities, and physical attacks.
The state of exception decree suspended the right to legal defense, as well as the requirement that persons be informed the reason of their arrest at the time of their detention, and it increased the number of days an individual could be held in detention before being formally charged. Because the decree also suspended the right to legal counsel, law enforcement agents did not wait for suspects to obtain counsel before questioning them.
Over three decades since the end of their civil war, Salvadorans watched corruption and misgovernance stymie growth and allow brutal criminal gangs to proliferate. Through it all, too many Salvadorans headed north – legally or otherwise – weakening the labor force and leaving behind too many people dependent on remittances. By 2019 Salvadorans had enough. Rejecting what they called “the same ones as always,” they elected an iconoclastic politician who promised change in a way that resonated, especially with the young. He was swiftly rewarded with a supermajority in the legislature. Backed by that majority, President Nayib Bukele then took control of the judiciary.
By May 2021, power in El Salvador was concentrated in the hands of its president. Since then, President Bukele has been on a whirlwind effort to remake El Salvador. He offers a social media-savvy vision of El Salvador as a futuristic mecca for surfers and cryptocurrency afficionados which he pairs with old-fashioned economic subsidies. In 2022, he added ironfisted policing that freed Salvadorans from the gangs at the price of due process of law. So far, that is a price the great majority of Salvadorans seem happy to pay. Along the way, President Bukele reduced the transparency of government. Given his party’s legislative majority and control of the judiciary, there are no checks and balances and little accountability. For those who do not share President Bukele’s vision, there is the worry that opposition could bring government harassment or worse. He has declared he will run for a second five-year term in 2024, despite an apparent prohibition on immediate reelection in the Salvadoran constitution.
The politicians who aspire to govern this country for the next five years are the current President Nayib Bukele (New Ideas Party), Manuel Flores (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front), Joel Sanchez (Nationalist Republican Alliance), Jose Renderos (Solidarity Force ), Luis Parada (Our Time), and Marina Murillo (Salvadoran Patriotic Fraternity).
Currently, Bukele captures 70.9 percent of electoral preference, according to a voting intention survey recently carried out by the Observa El Salvador consortium. This happens even though he has been criticized for the permanent extension of the "State of Exception", a measure aimed at ending gang-related violence in this Central American country.
Carried out through a voting simulation with 1,904 ballots, the Observa El Salvador survey also indicates that the other candidates are well below Bukele: Flores (2.9 percent), Sanchez (2.7 percent), Parada (1.1 percent), and Murillo (0.6 percent).
The political campaign that began on October 3, 2023 ended on 31 January 2024, when political organizations must maintain electoral silence so that Salvadorans reflect on their voting intention. According to the latest opinion polls, 32.8 percent of citizens consider that their main concern is the economic situation in El Salvador, a country where unemployment reaches 17.3 percent of the economically active population.
Najib Bukele, who is credited with reducing gang violence in Central America and is of Arab descent, enjoys great popularity and, in the absence of actual competition, appeared to be a confirmed candidate for a second presidential term in El Salvador to participate in the presidential and legislative elections.
According to a poll conducted by the University of Central America last January, it shows that about 8 out of 10 voters support Bukele (born July 24, 1981), despite the challenges facing his previous administration, which some saw as weakening the country’s system of checks and balances. The traditional parties in El Salvador , both left and right, remain in a state of chaos, after the conservative National Republican Alliance and the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front lost their credibility due to corruption and ineffectiveness after decades of alternating power.
Despite the accusations against Bukele's administration of committing widespread human rights violations , levels of violence have decreased in the country, which has made some voters, such as Marlene Mina, overcome fears of a decline in democracy and the concentration of power in his hands. Some Salvadorans say they are willing to ignore democratic concerns because security has improved in the previously gang-controlled city, which has made them feel safer while walking around.
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