El Salvador Midterm Elections Give President Unprecedented Control

President Nayib Bukele (Wikimedia Commons)

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele won a decisive victory in the country’s February 28 midterm elections, giving him near-total control of the government. The president’s Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas) party, along with the allied GANA party, won 61 of 86 seats in the Legislative Assembly—a supermajority. It is the first time any party has held a supermajority since El Salvador became a democracy in 1992. 

With this victory, the 39-year-old president holds unprecedented power. Bukele will now be able to replace officials such as the attorney general, appoint new Supreme Court justices, and even reform the constitution. 

Nayib Bukele founded the Nuevas Ideas party in 2018 and ascended to the presidency in 2019. He is responsible for essentially ending the two-party system that dominated the country’s politics after a 1980-1992 civil war. While the right-wing ARENA and left-wing FMLN parties still control seats in the Legislative Assembly, Nuevas Ideas has become the dominant force in El Salvador’s government. 

Following the midterm elections, some have expressed concern about Bukele’s authoritarian tendencies. A 2021 Human Rights Watch report points to instances in which the president used the military to intimidate legislators, defied Supreme Court rulings, and encouraged abusive measures to enforce a COVID-19 lockdown as causes for concern. 

Most Salvadorans, however, do not find the potential authoritarian shift to be troubling. In a 2018 poll, only 28 percent of Salvadorans surveyed supported democracy, a tie for the lowest approval rate for a democratic system in Latin America. The same survey found that 54 percent of Salvadorans do not care whether their government is democratic or not. 

At the same time, Bukele has widespread support in El Salvador, with some polls indicating his approval rating is higher than 80 percent. Bukele’s popularity is driven in part by decreasing rates of gang violence and support among citizens who wished to see a change from the corruption-plagued parties that the new president drove from power.

Bukele’s grip on power has reminded some Salvadorans of the country’s history of military dictatorship and civil war. The University of Central America in San Salvador, where eight people—including six Jesuit priests—were massacred in one of the most notorious events of the civil war, published an editorial addressing the midterm elections. The editorial warned that “believing that El Salvador can progress through authoritarianism without dialogue is to not know its history.”

Democracy is relatively young in El Salvador, and how Bukele chooses to react to his near-total control of the government will determine whether or not it will prevail. The president’s response also has the potential to influence other Central American countries that are sliding towards authoritarianism, such as Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala. If Bukele shows restraint, it may motivate other governments to follow suit, but if the president quickly moves to consolidate power, it is possible that a series of leaders do the same.