The U.S. State Department abstained from judging massive constitutional changes in El Salvador this week that removed term limits on the presidency, asserting the sovereignty of the country and disagreeing with the assessment that the country is comparable to other dictatorships.
The State Department issued its remarks to the Spanish news agency EFE following the news last week that the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly had voted to amend the nation’s constitution. El Salvador had maintained some form of presidential term limit since 1841, which no longer appears in the constitution. The reforms also eliminated the presidential runoff system, in which a candidate must receive 50 percent or more of the vote to win the presidency outright or otherwise enter a second round of voting against the runner-up in the first election.
Current President Nayib Bukele first became president in 2019 and won a second term in February 2024, avoiding the term limit by resigning from the presidency months before the election and thus running as a non-incumbent candidate. He received an overwhelming 85 percent of the vote, avoiding the runoff. The Organization of American States (OAS) certified the election as free and fair, stating its observers had “no doubts” over his victory.
Bukele’s outsized popularity, driven largely by his effective campaign to eliminate the stranglehold that organized criminal gangs had developed on the daily lives of Salvadorans, has led some to fear that he may be reelected indefinitely and those erode democracy, even if international observers find those elections to be free and fair. In El Salvador, the major opposition newspaper El Faro openly referred to Bukele as a “dictator.” The left-wing New York Times, which played an instrumental role in the success of Fidel Castro’s 1959 coup to end the Republic of Cuba, called Bukele an “autocrat” in a headline this week.
The administration of President Donald Trump did not appear to share in those concerns in its comment to EFE.
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“The legislative assembly of El Salvador was elected democratically to promote the interests and policies of its electors. The decision to make constitutional changes is theirs,” the State Department told the Spanish outlet on Tuesday. “It is up to them to decide how to govern their country.”
“We reject the comparison of the legislative process of El Salvador, based on democracy and constitutionally sound, to illegitimate dictatorial regimes in other parts of our region,” the statement added.
Bukele himself responded to the outrage, concentrated particularly among center-left and leftist groups, over the lifting of term limits by accusing them of holding his smaller, less wealthy country to a higher standard than the world’s richest nations.
“90% of developed countries allow the indefinite reelection of their head of government, and no one bats an eye,” he wrote in a message on social media this week. “But when a small, poor country like El Salvador tries to do the same, suddenly it’s the end of democracy.”
He noted that many of the nations in question were monarchies lacking term limits on their prime ministers, but added, “if El Salvador declared itself a parliamentary monarchy with the exact same rules as the UK, Spain, or Denmark, they still wouldn’t support it. In fact, they would go ballistic if that happened.”
“The problem isn’t the system, it’s the fact that a poor country dares to act like a sovereign one,” he concluded. “You’re not supposed to do what they do. You’re supposed to do what you’re told. And you’re expected to stay in your lane.”
Bukele’s administration enjoys positive ties with the Trump White House currently and did so during the American president’s first term – fact Bukele noted during Joe Biden’s presidency, condemning the Democrat for failing to support his war on gangs. Bukele appeared especially irate in 2022, when the Biden State Department appeared to take credit for supporting Bukele’s anti-gang efforts.
“Yes, we got support from the U.S. government to fight crime, but [that] was UNDER THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION,” he replied on social media, adding that Biden was “only supporting the gangs.”
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During a visit to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2024, Bukele explained that El Salvador was “not in the priorities” of the Biden administration and that Biden “has not been very interested in working with us since the beginning.”
Trump’s relationship to Bukele has not been without some tensions; Trump surprisingly criticized Bukele during his speech before the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July 2024, accusing him of deporting gangsters to the United States (Trump added that if he were the president of a Central American nation, “ I would be worse than any of them. I would have had the place totally emptied out already”). Bukele took the comment in stride, however, refusing to attack Trump in response and graciously congratulating the president upon his victory in November.
Bukele visited the White House in April, stating his country was “very eager to help” Washington any way that it could. Trump praised Bukele’s governance, applauding the “great job you’re doing.” In his invitation to Bukele to visit, Trump wrote, “You have shown real leadership and are a model for others seeking to work with the United States.”
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