Image Credit: MARVIN RECINOS / Contributor / Getty Images 
El Salvador’s legislative assembly has approved amendments to the country’s constitution that will allow current President Nayib Bukele to stand for election again.
The amendments, which passed the country’s legislature by means of an expedited system, were approved 57-3, with the overwhelming support of representatives from Bukele’s New Ideas party.
The Salvordan constitution in all eight forms has traditionally forbidden a president from seeking immediate reelection or reelection altogether.
Bukele was reelected in 2024 by means of a legal loophole, with the support of the country’s Supreme Court.
The new amendments will allow the president to seek reelection an unlimited number of times and also extends each presidential term to six years.
Salvadoran lawmaker Ana Figueroa, who put the proposal before parliament, justified the changes to the constitution by arguing voters should have sovereignty over how long officials remain in office. She said “only you [Salvadorans] will decide how long you support your president and all elected officials.”
“We are contributing to the refounding of this country, to this project that was denied us for so many years… How wonderful it is to be able to make decisions and establish regulatory frameworks that allow us to respond to the needs of these times,” a New Ideas lawmaker said.
Bukele has won huge popular support as a result of his crackdown on crime, which saw a state of emergency declared and thousands of gang members swept off the streets and into prison, including a new mega-prison named the Centre for Terrorist Confinement, or CECOT for short.
Gangs such as MS-13 and 18th Street have now virtually disappeared from the streets, and the murder rate has plummeted from levels comparable to active warzones, to one of the lowest in the Western hemisphere—lower even than in the US.
Critics of President Bukele, within the country and outside, have called him a dictator, a label he has jokingly appropriated, calling himself “the World’s Coolest Dictator.”
“Personally, I have been called a dictator in every media outlet that has wanted and been able to do so. From Salvadoran pamphlets to the most prestigious international pamphlets” Bukele said.
“You know what? I don’t care if they call me a dictator,” he added, and asserted, “I’d rather they call me a dictator than see Salvadorans being killed in the streets.”
President Bukele recently agree a deal with the US for millions of dollars to house some of the worst illegal aliens deported from the US in CECOT, including members of MS-13.
