El Salvador Perspectives

Thursday El Salvador's Legislative Assembly voted to override a veto from president Nayib Bukele and approved a measure expanding the ability of Salvadoran citizens living outside of the country to vote.  Previously Salvadorans in the diaspora could only vote in presidential elections.   Now they will be able to vote for deputies in the Legislative Assembly and members of municipal government as well. The expansion of the vote was necessary to comply with a prior ruling of the Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Judicial Court. The idea that a Salvadoran citizen living in Toronto, Canada for the past thirty years should be able to vote for the mayor of the town of Suchitoto and legislative deputies from the department of Cuscatlán, is not immediately obvious. Yet if that Salvadoran residing in Canada shows she has ties to Suchitoto, that is now her right. The new law requires Salvadorans to enroll to vote in a municipality by showing that they have...

Last night El Salvador's Legislative Assembly passed a " national reconciliation law. "   The purpose of the law is to comply with a dictate of the Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Judicial Court which repealed a 1993 amnesty law protecting all perpetrators of crimes, including crimes against humanity and other war crimes, from the civil war period. The new law was passed with 44 votes in favor , one more than the 43 necessary in the 84 member legislature.   The support came from the conservative ARENA party which has a plurality in the Assembly and its conservative allies, PCN and PDC.  As the Assembly gathered yesterday for an extraordinary session in the evening, President Nayib Bukele promised in a tweet to veto the law.  The approval of a national reconciliation law, despite criticism by victims and human rights groups, hands president Nayib Bukele the opportunity to portray himself as champion of victims through the exercise of...

El Salvador's Legislative Assembly is making another attempt this week to pass a new national law of reconciliation, 28 years after the end of the country's bloody civil war.  The proposed legislation is a measure which critics label as continuing impunity and a form of amnesty in fact for perpetrators of crimes against humanity, drafted without giving victims and their representatives access to the language of the proposal. A reconciliation law is required by a 2016 decision of the Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Judicial Court which overturned a blanket amnesty law passed in 1993.  The 1993 law had granted broad amnesty for all crimes, including crimes against humanity and war crimes, committed during the country's 12 year civil war.  In its 2016 decision, the Constitutional Chamber required the Legislative Assembly to pass new laws to provide for post war reconciliation, taking into account victims' rights under international human rights nor...

There is a wealth of coverage of El Salvador available in English this week on a potpourri of topics: Why is this Chicago cop training police in El Salvador? (Chicago Reader) --  "ITTA is a small police training company founded in Chicago that has trained more than 600 officers in El Salvador. That's problematic given the behavior of some of the U.S. officers running the program." El Salvador president gains most from prosecution of rivals  (InsightCrime) -- "The evidence used to indict several high-ranking politicians in El Salvador for negotiating with gangs has been around for years, raising questions about why prosecutors are bringing the cases now, and what President Nayib Bukele stands to gain." Challenges after an Attempted Self-coup in El Salvador  (El Faro English) -- "Bukele sees himself above the norms of his job, as well as free of legal formalities. He was set on demonstrating that his political experiment isn’t tied down to any rules. H...

It was a proceeding not seen in El Salvador for twenty years. Government officials from the Bukele administration were required to come before the full Legislative Assembly to answer questions for three days from the assembled deputies in a process called interpelación . The officials were the Minister of Health, Dr. Ana Orellana Bendek, and the president of the ANDA water authority, Fréderick Benítez, and they were being questioned about a water crisis earlier this year when the water from the Las Pavas water purification plant was a dirty brown color with a bad odor. The politicians in the Legislative Assembly, of course, were not just trying to learn what happened, but to score points against the Bukele administration. What we did learn: 1) You should probably never drink the water from the ANDA water system 2) The health risk of the water during the January water crisis was not significantly worse than normal, despite the bad color and odor. 3) The bad color and odo...

News has come from Spain that a trial will finally commence for the 1989 massacre in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests, their co-worker and her daughter at the University of Central America.  The  Guernica Center  issued this statement: The murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper’s daughter on 16 November 1989 by the Atlacatl Battalion of the Salvadoran Military ultimately led to the end of the civil war in El Salvador and catalyzed the victims’ quest for truth, justice, and accountability. After 30 years of seeking justice and 10 years of active litigation, the Spanish National Court will try former Colonel and Vice-Minister of Public Security, Inocente Orlando Montano, starting on 8 June 2020. Montano is charged with murder and terrorism for his alleged involvement as one of the key decision-makers behind the Jesuit killing. The Guernica Centre for International Justice—part of The Guernica Group—and Spanish co-counsel Ollé & Sesé Abog...

In the current confrontation between the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and the country's Legislative Assembly, I have shared much of the criticism directed at the president.  That criticism involves his unilateral decision to convene the congress and his subsequent entrance into the chambers of the Legislative Assembly accompanied by troops in full tactical gear and sharpshooters on rooftops.   But the critiques of these actions, which reveal an authoritarian streak in Bukele, do not mean the Legislative Assembly gets a free pass.  In fact, that branch of government has a record of not addressing pressing needs of El Salvador. There are 84 deputies in the Legislative Assembly who serve three year terms.  The two post-war dominant parties,  ARENA on the right and the FMLN on the left, hold 37 and 23 seats respectively.  Bukele ran for president on the ticket of the right wing GANA party in a marriage of convenience, and that party holds 1...