El Salvador Perspectives

El Salvador's police and security forces were burying eight of their own this week. The director of the National Civilian Police, Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, and seven other members of the police and armed forces were killed last Sunday night when the helicopter they were flying in crashed in eastern El Salvador. They died along with a fugitive banker wanted in a corruption case who was being returned to face justice in El Salvador. From the Associated Press report  of the event: El Salvador’s military says the national police director, other high-ranking police officials and a fugitive banker were among nine people killed in a military helicopter crash in a rural part of the country. The cause of the crash on Sunday night is under investigation. It occurred after the banker, Manuel Coto, was captured in Honduras over the weekend and handed over to Salvadoran authorities at the border. Coto, the former manager of the COSAVI savings and loan cooperative, had been the subject of an Int...

Alejandro Muyshondt Days after publicly denouncing a Nuevas Ideas legislator for corruption, Nayib Bukele's national security advisor, Alejandro Muyshondt, was arrested in August 2023 and accused of being a spy for former president in exile Mauricio Funes. Muyshondt disappeared into the incarceration system of the State of Exception, and six months later he was dead. His case is one that leaves more questions than answers, and the government of Bukele is remaining silent on the matter. Alejandro Muyshondt served as a national security advisor to Bukele starting at the beginning of Bukele's presidency in June 2019. Muyshondt had previously served as an advisor to Bukele from 2017 to 2019 while Bukele was mayor of San Salvador, and they were reportedly childhood friends. According to Muyshondt's  curriculum vitae on the Transparency Portal of the Salvadoran government, he graduated from the University of Angers in France with a degree in criminology in 2003, and in 2008 foun...

  El Salvador is at the end of its first three years with  a Legislative Assembly controlled by Nayib Bukele and his Nuevas Ideas (NI) party.  These were three years which had a dramatic impact on Salvadoran democracy.  Here are some of the major steps of the NI-controlled Assembly: 1. Deposed the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Judicial Court .  On its first day in power, May 1, 2021, the NI-controlled Assembly removed all of the magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber, the country's highest judicial authority. It removed the magistrates all at once, without giving them notice or the opportunity to be heard.  2.  Appointed new friendly judges to the Constitutional Chamber.    On the same night it purged the Chamber, the Assembly elected a new slate of judges completely ignoring the process in the constitution for appointing new judges. 3.  Deposed the attorney general .   Still on the same night that the Asse...

Counting votes in Antiguo Cuscatlán In yesterday's election of mayors, Nuevas Ideas appears to have captured 28 municipal governments out of 44 in the newly-gerrymandered maps. (Two of those in coalition with CD).   This total probably came as a surprise to many, in light of Nuevas Ideas dominating showing in last month's presidential and Legislative Assembly elections.  With 78% of the vote nationally counted as of 7:30 Monday morning,  other parties in the lead to win municipalities included GANA(6), PDC (4), PCN (3), Fuerza Solidaria (1), ARENA (1) and a coalition of PDC/PCN (1).  The FMLN was left out of control of any municipality for the first time since it became a political party at the end of the civil war in 1992. Turnout at the polls was low . Perhaps the reason was that people felt disconnected from the new mega-municipalities.  Or these elections may have had less energy without the charismatic energy of Nayib Bukele.  Bukele did not use ...

On Sunday March 3, Salvadorans will go to the polls for the second set of national elections in a month.   In these elections, Salvadorans will elect their mayors and will elect deputies of the Central American Parliament.  (PARLACEN). Three years ago Salvadorans elected mayors in 262 different municipalities.  However, in a measure passed 8 months ago, the Legislative Assembly consolidated those 262 municipalities into only 44 municipalities at the directive of Nayib Bukele.  The old municipalities are now "districts" within the 44 new mega-municipalities which have memorable names like San Salvador East and La Libertad South.   The new municipalities and the districts which make them up are shown at this link .   This reduction in the number of local government bodies was gerrymandering on a dramatic scale.   One analyst portrayed the impact of the change using results from the last elections in 2021. Using the votes cast for may...

The troubled vote count for Legislative Assembly in El Salvador ended today.   Nayib Bukele's absolute control over the legislature was solidified as a product of elections conducted under rules changed for the express purpose of benefitting Nuevas Ideas. Results are here . In the Legislative Assembly elections, on a nationwide basis, Nuevas Ideas was not as popular as its leader Bukele. The party received 71% of the popular vote compared to his 83% in the presidential election. However, because of a series of election law changes passed at the last minute in June 2023, the party will obtain 54 seats, equal to 90% of the 60 seat Legislative Assembly.   How did 71% of the votes turn into 90% of the deputies? It's a matter of election engineering through changing mathematical formulas.  Let me explain.  A year ago, Salvadorans thought they knew the rules of the game for the coming national elections. After all, the country had a law on the books which stated ...

In El Salvador's Adolfo Pineda National Gymnasium, 300 work tables have been set up to tabulate  results for the election of seats in the Legislative Assembly.  Boxes of ballots from all over the country are brought to the facility, where ballots are reviewed and the results "digitized" to produce election results through a process called the "escrutinio final" or "final scrutiny."     However, election observers, the press, and opposition party representatives have been denouncing a wide variety of anomalies and discrepancies in the process.       Each position in the gym works to tabulate the results from individual votes placed into the ballot box at a "Junta Receptora de Votos" or JRV.   Citizens throughout the country were assigned in groups of 700 for each JRV to cast their votes.   (This does not apply to voting from abroad for the diaspora which was a different process, and for which we do not know how those vote...

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.  ...

Here are a collection of bits and pieces from the news in El Salvador during the past month when we were on break.  1.  Cargo ferry service begins. Commercial cargo ferry service arrived between Costa Rica and El Salvador on Thursday, August 10.  The Blue Wave Harmony ferry is able to carry 100 tractor trailer trucks for the 430 mile voyage through the Pacific from one country to the other in less than 24 hours.  There will be two trips per week.   The first trip was not without problems, needing almost 28 hours to complete the journey and being unable to unload trucks on arrival in Costa Rica when it was low tide. The business case for the ferry rests in being able to ship good between the two countries while bypassing border crossings with Honduras and Nicaragua.  Commerce with Nicaragua under the dictatorial Ortega government has become increasingly subject to uncertainty. 2.   A crypto safe haven. El Salvador is becoming a haven for cry...