El Salvador scraps term limits, paving way for Bukele to rule indefinitely

“Today, democracy has died in El Salvador,” said Marcela Villatoro, an MP with the opposition Republican National Alliance (Arena).

Mr Bukele, who has been president of the Central American nation since 2019, is a polarising figure. His major crackdown on crime has proved popular among voters, but human rights groups say thousands have been arbitrarily arrested.

The reform, reviewed under an expedited procedure, will also extend term times to from five to six years, while the next election will be brought forward to 2027.

El Salvador’s congress has approved constitutional reforms to abolish presidential term limits, allowing President Nayib Bukele to run an unlimited number of times.

The reform was adopted by Bukele’s 57 supporters in the Legislative Assembly, and voted against by only three opposition members. Critics say the move will entrench one-party rule in the country.

“Thank you for making history, fellow deputies,” said the president of the Legislative Assembly, Ernesto Castro, from the ruling New Ideas party, after counting the votes.

Bukele, 44, won a second term last year despite a clear prohibition in the country’s constitution.

El Salvador’s top court, which is filled with Bukele-backed judges, ruled in 2021 that it was the leader’s human right to run again.

The overhaul will also shorten the president’s current term by two years, to synchronize elections in 2027, as presidential, legislative and municipal elections are currently staggered.

Despite his popularity, Mr Bukele remains a controversial figure.

His crime crackdown has caused murder rates to fall. But human rights groups say that thousands have been arbitrarily arrested during his anti-gang drive.

An estimated 75,000 people have been arrested under emergency measures that have been repeatedly extended.

“The day before vacation, without debate, without informing the public, in a single legislative vote, they changed the political system to allow the president to perpetuate himself in power indefinitely and we continue to follow the well-travelled path of autocrats,” Noah Bullock, executive director of rights group Cristosal, said.

In a report in December, Amnesty International criticised the “gradual replacement of gang violence with state violence”.

El Salvador’s parliament has scrapped the presidential term limits, paving the way for President Nayib Bukele to remain in office indefinitely, as per media reports.

The controversial move allows Bukele to seek an additional term beyond that previously allowed under the country’s constitution.

The constitutional amendment passed on Thursday by President Bukele’s ruling New Ideas party, which holds a majority in Congress, paves the way for indefinite presidential re-election, increases term lengths from five to six years, and eliminates runoff elections.

Notably, despite a constitutional ban on immediate presidential re-election in El Salvador, the country’s top court, which was reconstituted in 2021 by a Congress dominated by President Nayib Bukele’s pro-government party, ruled that Bukele has the fundamental right to seek a second consecutive term.

Bukele, 44, enjoys one of the highest favorability ratings in the region, regularly polling above 70 per cent in independent surveys.

His supporters laud his crackdown on criminal gangs in the country, which has resulted in a dramatic drop in the murder rate, which was once one of the highest in the world.

But mass arrests — El Salvador now has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world — have also drawn the ire of human rights groups, who allege that Bukele’s government is detaining innocent people and subjecting prisoners to inhumane conditions behind bars, including torture, according to CNN.

Bukele doesn’t shy away from comparisons to autocratic rulers — he once dubbed his biography “the world’s quietest dictator” on Twitter — and his government has been said to be “eroding” democracy in the country, CNN reported.

El Salvador’s constitution bars presidents from running for reelection. But the country’s Congress replaced the top Supreme Court justices in 2021 with a new class willing to give them power.

The so-called “Bukele method” has quickly become part of Latin American security policy, with presidents of both Honduras and Ecuador clearing the way for mass arrests to curb rising gang violence in their countries, as reported by CNN.

According to a survey conducted in 2023 by Latinobarómetro, in at least 13 countries in Latin America, the majority of the population “would not mind an undemocratic government coming to power if it could solve the problems”.

(With ANI Inputs)

Summary Ruling party says Erdogan’s potential fourth term depends on public support

Constitutional amendment or early election needed for Erdogan’s candidacy

AKP and allies hold 321 seats, need 360 for constitutional change

ANKARA, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Paving the way for Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to run for a fourth term in office is “on our agenda”, the spokesman for the president’s ruling party said on Monday, adding that the important factor was whether the people wanted it.

Erdogan, modern Turkey’s longest-serving leader, has been in power for more than two decades, first as a premier and later as president. Under Turkey’s presidential term limits he is in his final term of office unless there is a constitutional amendment or parliament calls an early election.

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He was first elected president in 2014 under a parliamentary system, and was later re-elected in 2018 and 2023 following some constitutional amendments by his ruling AK Party (AKP) and their nationalist MHP allies to impose an executive presidency.

Asked by reporters about an exchange between a singer and Erdogan at the weekend in which Erdogan responded to a question about running for a new term by saying: “I am in if you are”, AKP spokesman Omer Celik said the AKP was pleased that the issue had been brought on the agenda.

“As those of us who march with our President, it is on our agenda,” he said at a press conference in Ankara. “We will see about a formula. In politics, one year is a very short time, one day is very long. What is important is that our people want it,” he added.

“When we look at events transpiring around us, is visible at every opportunity how important our president’s knowledge and political will is for our country,” he added.

In November, MHP leader Devlet Bahceli floated the idea of a constitutional amendment to allow the president to run again in elections set for 2028.

A constitutional change can be put to a referendum if 360 lawmakers in the 600-seat parliament back it. An early election also needs the support of 360 MPs.

AKP and its allies have 321 seats.

Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu, Ece Toksabay and Huseyin Hayatsever; Editing by Toby Chopra

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PHOENIX, Sept 24 (Reuters) – Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden in Arizona’s most populous county, a review of results by his allies in the Republican Party has reaffirmed, capping a widely panned effort spurred by Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, the Republican who paved the way for the so-called “full forensic audit” of 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County, said the review’s overall vote tally matched the initial results in November.

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“Truth is truth, numbers are numbers,” Fann said at a Senate hearing on the review, which found only small variations, yielding 99 additional votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump. “Those numbers were close, within a few hundred.”

The conclusion will dismay Trump supporters who had pushed for the review, many in the expectation that it would prove his unfounded assertions that he was robbed of re-election due to orchestrated fraud. So far no such proof has been produced either by Trump or his backers.

Outside groups tied to the “Stop the Steal” movement and other efforts to cast doubt on the 2020 results raised nearly all of the $6 million to fund the inquiry, viewing it as a catalyst for similar investigations in Pennsylvania, Michigan and other battleground states that Trump lost.

In Texas on Thursday, the secretary of state’s office said the state had begun an audit of the presidential election in its four largest counties – Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Collin – an announcement that came hours after Trump publicly called for such a move. Although Trump carried Texas, Biden won three of the targeted counties.

Trump, who had predicted the Arizona inquiry would substantiate his claims, issued a statement that appeared at odds with the review’s findings, calling it “a big win for democracy and a big win for us.”

Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer who represented Republican George W. Bush when he prevailed over Democrat Al Gore in a 2000 electoral dispute, called the review’s conclusions a “huge defeat” for Trump.

“This was Donald Trump’s best chance to prove his cases of elections being rigged and fraudulent and they failed,” Ginsberg said on a media call organized by the States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan policy group.

BIDEN VICTORY REAFFIRMED

Item 1 of 6 People gather outside Arizona Government building ahead of the announcement of interim findings from a widely criticized audit of the 2020 election in Phoenix, Arizona, September 24, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Blake [1/6] People gather outside Arizona Government building ahead of the announcement of interim findings from a widely criticized audit of the 2020 election in Phoenix, Arizona, September 24, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Blake Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab

In Arizona, Biden won by just over 10,000 votes, a narrow win confirmed by a hand recount and multiple post-election tests for accuracy. Biden carried Maricopa, which includes Phoenix, by about 45,000 votes, making it critical to his defeat of Trump.

The Arizona inquiry is part of a larger effort by Republicans to undermine faith in the 2020 election and gain more control over the voting process. So far this year, at least 18 Republican-led states have passed legislation curbing ballot access, moves they say are needed to ensure election integrity. Democrats say such laws are aimed at gaming the system since Republicans tend to do better in low-turnout elections.

Fann said the state Senate was working on legislation to achieve an “unimpeachable electoral process”, based on alleged issues found in the review. She called for improvements to the signature verification process for absentee ballots, to the maintenance of voter rolls and to cybersecurity, even though no evidence has emerged that the state’s systems were breached.

Democratic leaders said they were worried Republicans would use the review as a pretext to enact laws suppressing the vote.

Arizona’s top elected official Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, in a statement denounced the review as “a political stunt that created massive security risks, cost millions of dollars, and has shaken faith in free and fair elections.”

A wide array of election experts, Democrats and some Republican officials had long rejected the Arizona audit as a highly partisan boondoggle run by contractors without relevant expertise. The lead contractor was an obscure company, Cyber Ninjas, whose chief executive has promoted conspiracy theories about orchestrated fraud in the election.

The audit was marked by practices that critics described as ranging from inappropriate to bizarre, including counters marking ballots with blue ink, which can alter how they are read by machines, and workers checking for traces of bamboo fibers based on a conspiracy theory that forged ballots may have been shipped in from Asia.

While finding the overall vote tallies largely matched up, the report highlighted a series of alleged problems, including 10,342 potential voters who voted in different counties, which Cyber Ninjas termed a “critical finding.”

As part of a point-by-point rebuttal on Twitter, Maricopa County called that claim “laughable”, suggesting those conducting the review may have failed to account for people with matching names and birth years in different counties, a not uncommon occurrence in a state of more than 7 million people.

Fann said she had passed along the review’s findings to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who said his election integrity unit would look at the evidence.

“Arizonans deserve to have their votes accurately counted and protected,” Brnovich said.

Reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix and Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Additional reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Soyoung Kim, Howard Goller and Daniel Wallis

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