2021 Salvadoran political crisis | |||
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Date | 1 May 2021 | ||
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Caused by | Nuevas Ideas victory in the 2021 legislative election | ||
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The 2021 Salvadoran political crisis occurred on 1 May 2021 when the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador voted to remove several judges from the Supreme Court and remove the Attorney General of El Salvador, both of which had been vocal opponents to the presidency of Nayib Bukele. The event has been referred to as a self-coup by the opposition and by news media outlets due to the action itself but also because of the 2020 Salvadoran political crisis in the year prior, where Bukele ordered soldiers into the Legislative Assembly, which has also been characterized as a self-coup.
On 9 February 2020, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele ordered forty soldiers to enter the Legislative Assembly to pressure its deputies to vote in favor of requesting a $109 million loan from the United States in order to support his Territorial Control Plan, a law enforcement measure against crime in El Salvador. [1] [2] [3] He sat in the chair of Mario Ponce, the President of the Legislative Assembly, and after a few minutes, exited the Legislative Assembly and informed a crowd of supporters: "We're going to give these scoundrels a week and if they haven't approved the plan by then, we convene them again," in reference to the politicians he needed to approve the loan request. [3] [4] [5]
Small protests against Bukele formed following the incident, known in El Salvador as 9-F, however, many more Salvadorans spoke out on social media in support of Bukele. [4] [6] Lawmakers and the political opposition condemned Bukele's action as an attempted coup d'état. [4] [7] [8] The Supreme Court of El Salvador also condemned his action and prohibited him from calling the Legislative Assembly and prohibited the Ministry of Defense to carry out any actions not allowed by the Constitution. [5] [9] The incident was cited as a case of democratic backsliding in El Salvador. [10] [11] [12]
During the COVID-19 pandemic in El Salvador, Bukele had ordered the National Civil Police to arrest people for violating lockdown orders. [13] The Constitutional Court, a part of the Supreme Court, ruled that arresting citizens for violating lockdown orders was illegal, however, Bukele openly rejected and ignored the court ruling. [13] On 8 November 2020, Raúl Melara, the Attorney General of El Salvador, opened investigations into twenty of Bukele's government institutions for corruption. [14] [15]
El Salvadorportal |
On 28 February 2021, the 2021 Salvadoran legislative election resulted in a victory for Nuevas Ideas, Bukele's political party, which won 56 of the Legislative Assembly's 84 seats. [16] The new session of the Legislative Assembly began on 1 May 2021. [17] Ponce's term as President of the Legislative Assembly ended with the new session of the legislature, and the new session voted in Ernesto Castro as the new President of the Legislative Assembly with a margin of 64 votes in favor and 20 abstentions. [18] [19] [a]
Following the vote of Castro, the Legislative Assembly then voted to remove all five judges of the Supreme Court's Constitutional Court which had opposed Bukele in the past, citing that they had previously "issued arbitrary decisions." [15] [20] The vote ended with 64 in favor, 19 in opposition, and 1 abstention. [21] Elisa Rosales, a leader of Nuevas Ideas, stated that there was "clear evidence" that the judges had impeded government conduct and that they had to be removed to protect the public. [20] Immediately after the vote, the five judges ruled the vote unconstitutional, but the judges were removed anyway. [13] [20] The judges who were removed were Óscar Armando Pineda Navas, the President of the Supreme Court, Aldo Enrique Cáder, Carlos Sergio Avilés, Carlos Ernesto Sánchez, and Marina de Jesús Marenco. [22]
Later that same day, the Legislative Assembly also voted to remove Melara as Attorney General, and he later presented his resignation. [13] [15] [20] Rodolfo Delgado replaced Melara as attorney general on 2 May 2021. [23] [24] [25] Five new judges were appointed on 3 May 2021, all of whom were supporters of Bukele. [13] [17] The new judges were Óscar Alberto López Jerez, who replaced Pineda Navas as President of the Supreme Court, Luis Javier Suárez Magaña, Héctor Nahúm García, José Ángel Pérez Chacón, and Elsy Dueñas Lovos, [22] [26] and they were each given armed guards as personal bodyguards. [17]
The voting out of the judges and the Attorney General has been labeled as a coup, a self-coup, a powerplay, and a power grab by several news outlets and the political opposition of El Salvador as it gave Bukele and Nuevas Ideas increased political power. [17] [20] [27] [28] [29] It has also been labeled as a "threat to democracy." [30]
René Portillo Cuadra, a lawmaker of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), stated, "What happened last night in the Legislative Assembly, with a majority that the people gave them through the vote, is a coup." [20] Many of Bukele's supporters and followers, the Armed Forces of El Salvador, and the National Civil Police supported the actions of the Legislative Assembly. [15] [17]
Several human rights groups have condemned the action and accused Bukele of allowing the political crisis to happen. [15] [20] [37] Juan Pappier, the Senior Americas researcher of Human Rights Watch, stated that Bukele had "dismantle[d] all the internal checks and balances on his power." [28] The José Simeón Cañas Central American University (UCA) stated: "In this dark hour for our already weak democracy, the UCA calls for the defense of what was built after the war at the cost of so much effort and so many lives: a society where saying 'no' to power is not a fantasy." [21]
Politics of El Salvador takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of El Salvador is both head of state and head of government, and of an executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Legislative Assembly. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. El Salvador was ranked 5th least electoral democratic country in Latin America and the Caribbean according to V-Dem Democracy indices in 2023 with a score of 0.378 out of 1.
The history of El Salvador begins with several distinct groups of Mesoamerican people, especially the Pipil, the Lenca and the Maya. In the early 16th century, the Spanish Empire conquered the territory, incorporating it into the Viceroyalty of New Spain ruled from Mexico City. In 1821, El Salvador achieved independence from Spain as part of the First Mexican Empire, only to further secede as part of the Federal Republic of Central America two years later. Upon the republic's independence in 1841, El Salvador became a sovereign state until forming a short-lived union with Honduras and Nicaragua called the Greater Republic of Central America, which lasted from 1895 to 1898.
The president of the Republic of El Salvador is the head of state and head of government of El Salvador. The president is also the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of El Salvador.
The Nationalist Republican Alliance is a conservative, center-right to right-wing political party of El Salvador. It was founded on 30 September 1981 by retired Salvadoran Army Major Roberto D'Aubuisson. It defines itself as a political institution constituted to defend the democratic, republican, and representative system of government, the social market economy system and nationalism.
The National Coalition Party is a nationalist political party in El Salvador. Until 2011 it was known as the National Conciliation Party. It was the most powerful political party in the country during the 1960s and 1970s, and was closely associated with the Salvadoran military. Julio Adalberto Rivera Carballo, a candidate of the National Conciliation Party, was elected president in 1962, and the next three presidents were also from the party. After the 1979 coup the party declined in influence but continued to exist.
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Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez is a Salvadoran politician and businessman who, since 1 June 2019, has been the 81st president of El Salvador. As a member of the Nuevas Ideas political party, Bukele is the first Salvadoran president since 1989 who was not elected as a candidate of one of the country's two major political parties: the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) or the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), of which Bukele had previously been a member.
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The 2020 Salvadoran political crisis, commonly referred to in El Salvador as the numeronym 9F or El Bukelazo, was an incident in El Salvador on 9 February 2020. During the political crisis, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele sent 40 soldiers of the Salvadoran Army into the Legislative Assembly building in an effort to coerce politicians to approve a loan request of 109 million dollars from the United States for Bukele's security plan for the country.
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