The Legislative Assembly of El Salvador dominated by President Nayib Bukele’s New Ideas party for the period 2024-2027 was officially installed on May 1.
With 58 votes from 60 congressmen, President Bukele’s former private secretary, Ernesto Castro, was elected to chair the legislative body, after leaving the Private Secretariat of the Presidency.
The Salvadoran legislative body returned to the number of deputies it had prior to the signing of the Peace Accords, when the number of deputies was increased from 60 to 84.
That amount remained until 2023, when New Ideas and allied parties approved reducing the size of the Assembly, as well as the formula used for deputies to be elected in legislative elections.
In addition to the presidency of the Legislative Assembly, the governing party was left with two vice-presidents and a secretariat, while its allies of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and the National Concertation Party (PCN) were assigned a secretariat to each within the Board of Directors of Parliament.
The two vice-presidents will be occupied by Congresswoman Suecy Callejas and Congressman Rodrigo Ayala, both from New Ideas.
The ruling party will be the main political force of the legislative body, with 54 deputies out of 60. For its part, the opposition will be represented by three congressmen: two from the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) and one of the center-right VAMOS party.
The Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) did not achieve any deputy for the first time since it became a party in 1992, nor did the Great Alliance for National Unity (GANA), a party with which Bukele reached the presidency in 2019.
This article has been translated from the original which first appeered in TeleSurTV