Politics of El Salvador

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Politics of the Republic of El Salvador

Política de la República de El Salvador
Coat of arms of El Salvador.svg
Coat of arms of El Salvador
Polity type Presidential republic
Constitution1983 Constitution of El Salvador
Formation 15 September 1821
Legislative branch
Name Legislative Assembly
Type Unicameral
Meeting place San Salvador
Presiding officer Ernesto Castro, President of the Legislative Assembly
Executive branch
Head of State
Title President of El Salvador
Currently Claudia Rodríguez de Guevara (acting)
Appointer Elected by the citizenry
Cabinet
Current cabinet Cabinet of Nayib Bukele
Judicial branch
Name Supreme Court of Justice
Courts
  • Constitutional Court
  • Administrative Disputes Court
  • Civil Court
  • Criminal Court
Chief judgeÓscar Alberto López Jerez

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. [1] [2]

Contents

Political culture

El Salvador has a multi-party system. Three political parties Nuevas Ideas (NI), the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) have tended to dominate elections since the end of the civil war. ARENA candidates won four consecutive presidential elections until the election of Mauricio Funes of the FMLN in March 2009. [3] In 2014, he was followed by another FMLN president, Salvador Sánchez Cerén. [4]

The 2019 election was won by Nayib Bukele as the candidate of the center-right Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA) party. In February 2021, El Salvador's legislative election was an important breakthrough. The new party, founded by President Bukele, Nuevas Ideas (NI), won around two-thirds of votes with its allies (NI–GANA). His party won a supermajority of 56 seats in the 84-seat legislature. Bukele became the country’s most powerful leader in three decades. [5]

On 4 February 2024, President Nayib Bukele, won re-election with 83% of the vote in general election. [6] His party Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas) won 58 of the El Salvador parliament's 60 seats. [7]

Before the Bukele era, the departments of the central region, especially the capital and the coastal regions, known as departamentos rojos, or red departments, were mostly left-wing while the departamentos azules, or blue departments, in the east, western and highland regions were generally conservative.

Executive branch

Main office-holders
OfficeNamePartySince
President Nayib Bukele (presidential powers suspended) Nuevas Ideas 1 June 2019
Claudia Rodríguez de Guevara (acting) Nuevas Ideas 1 December 2023

El Salvador elects its head of state, the President of El Salvador, directly through a fixed-date general election whose winner is decided by absolute majority. If an absolute majority is not achieved by any candidate in the first round of a presidential election, then a run-off pool election is conducted 30 days later between the two candidates who obtained the most votes in the first round. The president serves a five-year term. He is barred from immediately succeeding himself, though previously elected presidents may run for a second, non-consecutive term.

In September 2021, El Salvador's Supreme Court decided to allow President Nayib Bukele to run for a second term in the 2024 election, despite the Constitution prohibiting the president from serving two consecutive terms in office. The decision was made by judges appointed to the court by President Bukele. [8]

Legislative branch

Salvadorans also elect a single-chamber, unicameral national legislature, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador, of 84 members (deputies) elected by open-list proportional representation for three-year terms, with the possibility of immediate re-election. 20 of the 84 seats in the Legislative Assembly are elected on the basis of a single national constituency. The remaining 64 are elected in 14 multi-member constituencies (corresponding to El Salvador's 14 departments). They range from 3-16 seats each according to departmental population size.

Judicial branch

The Judiciary, headed by the Supreme Court, is composed of 15 judges, one of them being elected as President of the Judiciary.

Foreign relations

El Salvador is a member of the United Nations and several of its specialized agencies, the Organization of American States (OAS), the Central American Common Market (CACM), the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), and the Central American Integration System (SICA). It actively participates in the Central American Security Commission (CASC), which seeks to promote regional arms control.

El Salvador also is a member of the World Trade Organization and is pursuing regional free trade agreements. An active participant in the Summit of the Americas process, El Salvador chairs a working group on market access under the Free Trade Area of the Americas initiative.

Related Research Articles

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nationalist Republican Alliance</span> Conservative political party in 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elections in El Salvador</span> Democratic elections in El Salvador

The government of El Salvador is a presidential representative democratic republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian Democratic Party (El Salvador)</span> Political party in El Salvador

The Christian Democratic Party is a Salvadoran political party. From 2011 to 2012, the party was renamed to Party of Hope before reverting to the Christian Democratic Party. The PDC has been led by Reinaldo Carballo since 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grand Alliance for National Unity</span> Political party in El Salvador

The Grand Alliance for National Unity is a political party in El Salvador. The party established itself on 16 January 2010 and was recognized by the Supreme Electoral Court of El Salvador on 19 May of the same year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nayib Bukele</span> President of El Salvador since 2019

Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez is a Salvadoran politician and businessman who is the 43rd president of El Salvador, serving since June 2019. He is the first president since 1984 not elected as the candidate of one of the country's two major political parties: the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). Bukele served as mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán between 2012-15 and then as mayor of San Salvador, the capital, between 2015-18.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2019 Salvadoran presidential election</span>

Presidential elections were held in El Salvador on 3 February 2019, with Salvadorans electing the president and vice president for a five-year term from 2019 to 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernesto Muyshondt</span> Mayor of San Salvador, 2018 to 2021

Ernesto Luis Muyshondt García Prieto, is a Salvadoran businessman, politician and member of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party. He served as the mayor of San Salvador, the capital and largest city in El Salvador, from 2018 to 2021. He was previously a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador from 2015 until 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2021 Salvadoran legislative election</span>

Legislative elections were held in El Salvador on 18 February 2021. Salvadorans elected all 84 deputies of the Legislative Assembly, all 262 mayors of municipal councils of the country's municipalities, and all 20 of El Salvador's deputies to the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuevas Ideas</span> Political party in El Salvador

Nuevas Ideas is a Salvadoran political party. The party was founded on 25 October 2017 by Nayib Bukele, the then-mayor of San Salvador, and was registered by the Supreme Electoral Court on 21 August 2018. The party's current president is Xavier Zablah Bukele, a cousin of Bukele who has served since March 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2020 Salvadoran political crisis</span> Political crisis in El Salvador

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernesto Castro</span> Salvadoran politician and president of the Legislative Assembly (2021–present)

Ernesto Alfredo Castro Aldana is a Salvadoran politician and businessman who currently serves as the president of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador. Castro previously served as a secretary and private advisor to Nayib Bukele from 2012 to 2020 when he was elected as a deputy of the Legislative Assembly from San Salvador in the 2021 legislative election.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2021 Salvadoran political crisis</span> Political crisis in El Salvador

A political crisis in El Salvador 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2024 Salvadoran general election</span>

General elections were held in El Salvador on 4 February 2024 to elect the president, vice president and all 60 deputies of the Legislative Assembly. This was followed by a second set of elections on 3 March 2024 in which voters elected all 44 mayors and municipal councils of the country's municipalities and all 20 of El Salvador's deputies to the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN).

The following tables list the results of opinion polls for the presidential, legislative, and municipal elections conducted since October 2022 in reverse chronological order for the 2024 Salvadoran general election. The party with the highest percentage is listed in bold and displayed with its background shaded, and the party with the second highest percentage is listed in bold. The lead column shows the percentage between the parties with the first and second highest percentages. For legislative and municipal election polls, projected seat counts, if available, are listed below the percentage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manuel Flores (Salvadoran politician)</span> Salvadoran politician

Juan Manuel de Jesús Flores Cornejo, nicknamed "El Chino", is a Salvadoran politician. As a member of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), Flores served as the mayor of Quezaltepeque from 2003 to 2012 and then later as a deputy of the Legislative Assembly from La Libertad from 2012 to 2021. He was the presidential candidate for the FMLN in the 2024 general election with running mate was Werner Marroquín. He lost in a landslide to incumbent President Nayib Bukele, accumulating only 6.40 percent of the vote. Flores supports El Salvador further strengthening relations with the People's Republic of China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karim Bukele</span> Salvadoran businessman and politician

Karim Alberto Bukele Ortez is a Salvadoran businessman and politician. He is a younger brother of and was a presidential advisor to Nayib Bukele, the current president of El Salvador. Bukele has previously worked as Nayib's campaign manager during his 2015 and 2019 electoral campaigns as well as the campaign manager for the Nuevas Ideas political party in 2021. In late-2023, Bukele was considered a likely candidate to succeed Nayib as acting president in the event that he resigned ahead of the 2024 general election, however, Bukele denied that he would succeed Nayib.

Saúl Enrique Mancía is a Salvadoran politician and communications specialist who has served as a deputy of the Legislative Assembly from the department of Chalatenango since 2021. He serves as a member of the agriculture commission and the public works, transportation, and housing commission. Mancía is a member of Nuevas Ideas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Numan Salgado</span> Salvadoran politician

Numan Pompilio Salgado García is a Salvadoran politician, lawyer, and businessman who has served as a deputy of the Legislative Assembly since May 2015. He also served as the secretary of the Legislative Assembly from 2018 to 2021 and the second secretary from 2021 to 2024.

References

  1. ↑ V-Dem Institute (2023). "The V-Dem Dataset" . Retrieved 14 October 2023.
  2. ↑ Democracy Report 2023, Table 3, V-Dem Institute, 2023
  3. ↑ "El Salvador: Leftist Mauricio Funes sworn in as new president". Die Welt. 2 June 2009.
  4. ↑ "Former guerilla rebel and VP declared El Salvador's president". France 24. 13 March 2014.
  5. ↑ "El Salvador: Bukele has become the country's most powerful leader in three decades after his party won a supermajority". Credendo.
  6. ↑ "El Salvador: Bukele confirmed as president after final count – DW – 02/10/2024". dw.com.
  7. ↑ "El Salvador votes must be recounted, says electoral court – DW – 02/06/2024". dw.com.
  8. ↑ "El Salvador's Bukele gets greenlight to run for re-election". France 24. 4 September 2021.
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