El Salvador Perspectives

 El Salvador's Legislative Assembly passed a law for the upcoming election of president and the national congress which will allow Salvadorans living outside the country to cast their vote from home over the internet. At least some of them will be able to.  I'll explain. The system of voting from outside the country depends on the type of identity document a Salvadoran holds, whether it is a national identity card (DUI) or a passport. It does not matter whether the document has expired or not.  The residence address shown on the DUI is also relevant. For those Salvadorans who have a DUI showing an address outside of the country, they are able to go to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal website anytime between January 6 and February 4 and cast their vote using any web browser.  It is possible to get an updated DUI with a foreign residential address by applying at a consulate outside of the country up through November 5, 2023. For those Salvadorans with only a passport, or those who

Independence Day in El Salvador was filled with people marching in various locations throughout the country. The parade through San Salvador sponsored by the national government was filled with military displays and marching bands and more military displays: 🇸🇻✨💙🤍 #ElSalvadorRenace pic.twitter.com/TpcLGyj9Eq — Alcaldía de San Salvador (@alcaldia_ss) September 15, 2023 Meanwhile demonstrators protesting policies of the Bukele government also marched, seeking justice for thousands of innocent people imprisoned under the ongoing State of Exception, demanding rights for labor activists, protesting inadequate support of the healthcare sector, denouncing Bukele's violation of the constitution in seeking reelection, and pointing to the impact of the increasing cost of living: 🇸🇻 #15DeSeptiembre | Este día, diversas organizaciones y miles de personas de diferentes sectores del país, se manifestaron en rechazo a la reelección presidencial y otras causas sociales derivadas d

El Salvador will hold presidential elections in February 2024.   On the ballot will be Nayib Bukele, the current president, who is running for re-election under the banner of his party Nuevas Ideas, despite a clear prohibition on second consecutive terms in the Salvadoran constitution. But there will be candidates from other parties running for the presidency as well.   Here is a rundown on those candidates.  Other than Manuel Flores, the candidate from the FMLN, none of the candidates have significant prior political experience.  The candidates from Nuestro Tiempo and ARENA reside in the United States, and there is one woman running, for the first time in thirty years.  ARENA The presidential candidate from ARENA is Joel Sánchez.  He is a Salvadoran businessman residing in Dallas, with no previous experience in politics. His candidacy was promoted by the civil society group Resistencia Ciudadana and the right wing party will now have this member of the Salvadoran diaspora as its candi

September 7 is the second anniversary of Bitcoin becoming legal tender in El Salvador along with the US dollar.  This past year has seen Bitcoin fade from relevance for the vast majority of Salvadorans, and has seen the Salvadoran government cease to promote its use as a currency for daily transactions.       President Nayib Bukele has not tweeted or posted anything in Spanish about Bitcoin in the past year.  He did not mention Bitcoin in speeches to the nation last independence day, September 15, or in his state of the nation report on the fourth year of his presidency. There is no promotion of the use of Bitcoin as a currency coming out through the social media arm of the office of the president. You will look in vain on the website of the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador for any reports related to Bitcoin, despite the cyber-currency being legal tender in the country along with the US dollar.  You will also not find recent discussions, promotion or programs related to Bitcoin on

El Salvador has lived for a year and a half under the State of Exception. The State of Exception suspends the constitutional due process protections against arbitrary capture and detention, and allows people to be thrown into prison for months on the slimmest of allegations.  An anonymous phone tip can be sufficient to have someone captured. The "exceptional measures," which are touted by the Bukele regime for their impact in reducing gang-related crime in the country, have been used in some cases, say advocates, to silence and threaten activists and community leaders who protest development projects of friends of the Bukele regime.     Carolina Amaya is a journalist who focuses on environmental issues in El Salvador.  She has published important articles about challenges to the environment at her site MalaYerba .  Two days ago she wrote a much more personal column in El Faro about the arrest of her father, Benjamin Amaya, a veteran of the Salvadoran armed forces and campesi

The US State Department recently issued its 2023 report on the investment climate in El Salvador .  The opening paragraphs of the executive summary of this report offer a pretty good summary of the forces impacting the economy of the country: El Salvador’s location, preferential trade terms under the Central American Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), use of the U.S. dollar as legal tender, and recent improvements in the business environment are strengths as an investment destination. Significant levels of sovereign debt, the legacy of decades of gang violence and a lack of transparency in rulemaking are weaknesses. GDP rebounded strongly from the pandemic to 11.2 percent growth in 2021. The economy grew 2.6 percent in 2022. The IMF forecasts real GDP will grow 2.4 percent in 2023. Public debt is on an unsustainable path and creates uncertainty about El Salvador’s ability to honor its future commitments. El Salvador has engaged in negotiations with the International Mo

A new poll released by Francisco Gavidia University (UFG) shows the possibility, that after national elections in February 2024, Nayib Bukele and his Nuevas Ideas party will have firmly consolidated one party rule over all of the Salvadoran government. There is no surprise that Nayib Bukele has an overwhelming lead in his campaign to be re-elected president for a second five year term. The highly popular Bukele is preferred by more than 68% of respondents, while no other party's candidate reaches even 5%.   These results appear despite the fact that El Salvador's constitution states multiple times that a president may not be re-elected for successive terms. (See those provisions at the bottom of this post).  However, a panel of Bukele allied judges, installed in the Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Judicial Court by Nuevas Ideas in 2021, decided those provisions should be ignored and issued a ruling that Bukele should be permitted to run again.   The Februar