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The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, announced Thursday night, as part of the anniversary of the independence of Central America, that he will seek re-election in the 2024 presidential elections.
“After talking it over with my wife, Gabriela, and with my family, I announce to the Salvadoran people that I have decided to run as a candidate for the presidency in the 2024 elections,” Bukele announced on a national radio and television network.
The president is the first president of the Salvadoran democratic era with the option of seeking immediate reelection after a change of criteria made by the magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber that his allies in Congress elected in a widely criticized process.
In a September 2021 ruling, these judges pointed out that the prohibition of immediate reelection is for a ruler who has been in power for 10 years, while in previous rulings a president had to finish his 5-year term and wait 10 years to seek the presidency again.
Since then, President Bukele had not commented on the matter until Thursday.
The president said that the decision to seek reelection is so that “we can continue this path we have started, the path that for the first time in our history has proven to be the right one”.
“For sure, for sure, more than one developed country will not agree with this decision, but it is not them who will decide, but the Salvadoran people,” Bukele said.
At the end of the third year of his term, Bukele has maintained wide support of the population towards his way of governing and, if nothing extraordinary happens at the end of his term, he would be able to win the presidential chair again.
President Bukele’s government is currently waging a “war against the gangs,” which are accused of committing the majority of homicides in the Central American country.
According to Bukele, the “war against gangs” is “about to be won.”
“It is time for us to convince ourselves that we are free, sovereign, and independent, and above all that we want to live in peace,” concluded Bukele.
