On Sunday, January 21, Nayib Bukele asked Salvadorans to maintain the qualified majority in the Congress of their New Ideas (NI) party to protect security gains.
The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, favorite to re-election to power in the upcoming elections on February 4, called on Sunday, January 21, to vote not to put at risk – the controversial struggle his government is fighting against the gangs.
“This February 4 we must protect security achievements,” Bukele said in a one-minute video posted on his X account, before Twitter.
The president asks for the vote for the candidates of his party New Ideas to the Congress of Deputies.
“At the moment New Ideas has a qualified majority, but with only one less deputy we would lose that majority and put the war on gangs at risk,” Bukele said.
According to the Salvadoran president, if he does not have a qualified majority in Congress, his government could not approve the emergency regime, elect judges of the Supreme Court of Justice, the attorney general – or approve all the tools that are helping us to win this war – against gangs.
That means that with only one less deputy from New Ideas, the opposition will be able to achieve its true and only plan, free the gang members and occupy it to return to power, he added.
Bukele would win re-election and almost entirely dominate Congress in the February 4 elections, according to several polls.
In the February elections in addition to electing president, Salvadorans will also renew Congress.
On November 30, the president received a six-month parliamentary license to launch the re-election campaign.
The massive popular support for Bukele is due to the fact that his “war” against criminal gangs brought peace of mind to the population, despite limiting civil rights with an emergency regime that has been in force since March 2022, according to human rights groups.
Bukele is running for re-election after a controversial ruling by the Constitutional Court, which empowered him to run for a second consecutive term, although the Salvadoran Magna Carta did not allow for re-election.
This article has been translated from the original which first appeared in Prensa Libre