Bukele adds a week without public appearances after license for elections in El Salvador

The president of The Savior and candidate for immediate re-election by the Nuevas Ideas (NI) party, Nayib Bukelerecords a week without public appearances since the Congress He was granted a 6-month license to dedicate himself to the campaign.

The ruling party, which dominates the legislative Assembly (Parliament), approved Bukele’s request as the last requirement set by the Constitutional Chamber, whose legitimacy is questioned by various sectors due to his appointment without following the legal process, so that he can participate in the 2024 presidential elections.

This license came into force on December 1 after its publication in the Official Gazette and that same day Bukele would have been replaced in the Presidency by his appointee and private secretary, Claudia Juana Rodríguez de Guevara. In fact, the days before receiving the license, under which he would be removed from office, Bukele called two national radio and television networks, and a broadcast on social networks.

The first chain, held on November 28, was a meeting between Bukele and his Cabinet and in which he asked the Salvadoran attorney general, Rodolfo Delgado, to investigate his officials. Bukele and Delgadowho came to the Prosecutor’s Office after the dismissal of Raúl Melara in May 2021 and who had opened investigations against the Executive for the alleged irregular use of funds intended to address the pandemic, That same year, they closed the agreements that gave life to an international commission against Corruption with the OAS.

In April 2021, the commissioner of the International Commission Against Impunity (Cicies)Ronalth Ochaeta, indicated that they had given 25 assistance to the Prosecutor’s Office, among these 12 “notices of possible corruption offenses in five State portfolios.”

The second national chain, on November 29, was the inauguration of a health center on an island in the Salvadoran Pacific. The next broadcast, on November 30, was to begin the construction of a stadium for 50,000 spectators donated by China.

The acting president has also not had any public activity or in the Official Gazette, whose last publication was on December 1; It does not notice actions, such as dismissals, appointments or decrees on her part.

In the Central American country, the electoral campaign is enabled for the elections of February 4, 2024, without the opposition presenting messages in the mainstream media while they are observed from the ruling party. At the end of November, deputy Marcela Villatoro, from the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena)said that the opposition parties have not received the public funds that legally correspond to them for the political campaign.

”No political party, other than the Government party, has been given the political debt that legally corresponds to them,” he claimed. The last precedent of a president seeking immediate re-election in El Salvador occurred under the dictatorship of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, who governed between 1931 and 1944.

Bukele’s re-election candidacy has been called unconstitutional by lawyers, academics and civil organizations, an argument that the president himself maintained in the recent past.

(Source: EFE)