El Salvador Now Allows Indefinite Presidential Re-election
Approved by the Legislative Assembly Controlled by Bukele
The reforms include extending the presidential term to six years and eliminating the runoff vote, similar to the what exists in Nicaragua.
HAVANA TIMES – On Thursday, July 31, 2025, El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly, dominated by President Nayib Bukele’s party Nuevas Ideas (NI), approved a constitutional reform that allows for indefinite presidential re-election by removing previous prohibitions.
The initiative, which was passed with a waiver of procedure and no legislative study, received 57 votes from the ruling party and its allies to reform several articles of the Salvadoran Constitution, which had previously banned immediate re-election, three legislators voted against.
The reforms include extending the presidential term to six years, eliminating the second round in presidential elections, and shortening the current term so that it ends in 2027 instead of 2029, in order to align with legislative and municipal elections that year.
In February 2024, during the presidential elections in which he was re-elected, President Bukele was asked whether a constitutional reform allowing indefinite re-election was necessary. He replied: “I don’t think a constitutional reform is necessary.”
The decree passed on July 31 states: “It is urgent and unavoidable to synchronize electoral timelines by extending the presidency to six years, combined with unrestricted re-election.” It was rejected by the opposition, which declared that with this reform, “democracy in El Salvador has died.”
Another argument presented by NI lawmakers was the need to “avoid constant electoral campaigns and their high associated costs” by reducing the frequency of elections.
The new version of Article 80 removes the suspension of civil rights for those who promote re-election, while Article 152 deletes the clause stating that a person cannot run for president if they have held the presidency for more than six months—consecutively or not—during the previous term or within the six months prior to the start of the new presidential term.
Congresswoman Marcela Villatoro, from the opposition party Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), criticized the reform, stating that lawmakers “have made a public confession of killing democracy disguised as legality” and that “they have killed the Constitution.”
She called on lawmakers to stop “disguising dictatorship as popularity and romanticizing it,” adding that “they are self-declaring themselves as constitutional framers and changing the Constitution’s meaning” without having the authority to do so.
Claudia Ortiz, of the opposition party VAMOS, said that lawmakers from the ruling party “are lying to make people believe this reform is about giving power back to the people.”
“It’s clear that the reforms they’re pushing are part of a long-planned strategy that is not about empowering the people, but about keeping power for themselves and ensuring their party stays in power indefinitely,” she said.
Bukele began his second consecutive term on June 1, 2024, despite several constitutional articles prohibiting it, after the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court—appointed in 2021 by the first Nuevas Ideas -dominated Legislature in a controversial process—changed its interpretation.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.