El Salvador Presidential Elections 2024: How Possible Is Bukele’s Re-election?

Some 3,000 people protested on Friday in the capital of El Salvador against President Nayib Bukele's intention to seek re-election in 2024 and against "arbitrary detentions" within the framework of the emergency regime in force since March 2022.

The march covered several kilometers of the main streets of San Salvador to conclude in a rally in the Historic Center of the Salvadoran capital.

Among blankets, banners and shirts with messages against the administration of the Salvadoran president, union members, doctors, lawyers, relatives of missing people and detained people joined the protest.

Who attended the march?

Among the columns of attendees, in which messages such as "reelection is unconstitutional", "freedom for the innocent" and "no more corruption" were also given, politicians and three opposition presidential candidates were also observed.

This is Luis Parada, from the Nuestro Tiempo (NT) party; Joel Sánchez, from the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), and Manuel Flores, from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).

A long regime of exception

The relatives of those detained in the emergency regime, which totals more than 72,000 arrests of people that the Government accuses of belonging to gangs, shouted slogans throughout the march such as "they took them alive, we want them alive."

People from different areas of the country also attended, such as representatives of Bajo Lempa, a group of rural towns in which their inhabitants have presented dozens of habeas corpus for arbitrary detentions and have gone to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

José Salvador Ruíz, from the Bajo Lempa Base Ecclesial Communities, told EFE that he attended the march because public policies "continue to deteriorate the life of the Salvadoran population" and "to raise the voice of the victims of the regime." of exception" .

"We have discovered the arbitrariness of the emergency regime and the evil of how the poorest class has been treated," he said, adding that they have presented 130 habeas corpus before the Supreme Court and 66 cases before the IACHR.

A polarizing re-election

Regarding the intention of the president, ratified as a candidate of the ruling party Nuevas Ideas (NI), to seek re-election, he said that it is "unconstitutional."

"The Constitution tells us that a president cannot be there even one more day after having finished his term," he concluded.

Read also: Cryptocurrencies in El Salvador: Remittances Fall 28% until July 2023

This protest took place in parallel with the parade of soldiers, police and students within the framework of the 202nd anniversary of Central American independence from Spain.

Since September 2021, with the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender, various demonstrations against the Bukele Government have been held in El Salvador and have concentrated between hundreds and thousands of people.