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Time magazine reserved its latest cover for Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, including an interview in which the controversial Central American politician pledged that he would not run for a third term.
“I cannot run for president again, as prohibited by Article 152 of the constitution. Moreover, my wife and I have an agreement that this (term) will be the last,” Bukele said.
The Salvadoran president, whose term ends in 2029, thus referred to a clause in the Salvadoran constitution that has been the subject of controversy in recent years over how the leader of the New Idea party circumvented it in his bid for re-election.
The constitution prohibits the president from serving two consecutive terms, and in order to circumvent this prohibition, the El Salvador Legislative Assembly approved Bukele’s request in December 2023 to leave office for six months and focus on the presidential campaign, avoiding being legally considered a “president”. The incumbent president, therefore running for re-election.
Bukele also said in an interview with Time magazine that he has not yet decided on his future after 2029, but he is considering writing a book.
“It’s definitely a challenge because I don’t see myself going back to the private sector (…) I haven’t really thought about what I’m going to do in 2029,” he added.
Dressed in a dark coat and shirt, a far cry from the image of the millennial politician he tried to convey five years ago, Bukele appeared on the cover of Time magazine in a confident pose, his hands clasped on a table in the Blue House, with family photos in the background.
“I definitely don’t consider myself to be on the left or the right (…) People don’t see any direction on the left. The right is a little off the mark, but at least it’s charting a course. I don’t say that, left-wing academics and a lot of people say that,” he said when asked about his ideology.
Bukele’s popularity is based largely on his war on the mafia; he claims the criminal organization has 70,000 members (85% of whom he says he has captured) and 500,000 collaborators.
“We estimate that there are still 8,000 to 9,000 gang members on the streets (…) If we catch them, they will no longer have enough (means) to unite again,” he said.
Bukele’s government imposed an emergency system in March 2022, which is renewed monthly by the ruling party-dominated legislative assembly, relying on its crackdown on gangs but suspending basic rights such as being informed of the reasons for an arrest or having access to a lawyer.
Different organizations, such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch (HRW), point out that Bukele’s administration has minimized the power of the opposition and suppressed fundamental rights such as freedom of expression or legal guarantees such as due process.
Local nonprofit Humanitarian Legal Assistance estimated five months ago that more than 26,200 people were arbitrarily detained without gang ties, while Human Rights Watch warned in July that more than 3,000 minors had been arrested during the regime of exception. (I)
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