MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Trump administration said El Salvador President Nayib Bukele should not be lumped together with leaders in other countries it considers dictatorships after his party and allies discarded presidential term limits.
Bukele posted the statement of U.S. support on X Tuesday.
On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department said in a statement to The Associated Press that the constitutional change axing term limits in the Central American country was made by a “democratically elected” Congress and that “it is up to them to decide how their country should be governed.”
“We reject the comparison of El Salvador’s democratically based and constitutionally sound legislative process with illegitimate dictatorial regimes elsewhere in our region,” the statement said.
The speedy approval of indefinite presidential terms last week generated warnings from watchdogs and El Salvador’s beleaguered opposition that it spelled the end of the country’s democracy. The Congress also approved extending presidential terms from five to six years.
“It’s unfortunate to see the US government is defending efforts to establish an autocracy in El Salvador. This undermines the credibility of the State Department’s criticism to other authoritarian governments and dictatorships in the region,” said Juan Pappier, Americas deputy director for Human Rights Watch.
El Salvador’s archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas joined those expressing concern on Wednesday and called on lawmakers to reconsider approving the overhaul “without consulting” the Salvadoran people, which was crucial for the “legitimacy” of the constitutional reform.
The populist leader and his New Ideas party have spent years consolidating power, weakening checks and balances as they placed loyalists on the highest courts, undercut government watchdogs and pursued political opponents and critics.
Bukele remains wildly popular, largely because his all-out pursuit of the country’s once-powerful street gangs has brought security, though critics argue at the cost of due process.
Bukele defended the constitutional changes last week, writing on X that many European nations allow indefinite reelection “but when a small, poor country like El Salvador tries to do the same, suddenly it’s the end of democracy.”
Critics have said that is a false comparison, as those nations have stronger democratic institutions to serve as a check on executive power.
Increasingly though, those critics are leaving the country out of fear of arrest.
Watchdogs say an escalating crackdown on dissent is underway by Bukele, who has been emboldened by his alliance with U.S. President Donald Trump. After initially being critical of Bukele, the Biden administration also remained largely silent over human rights violations and concentration of power in El Salvador as the country helped slow migration north.
But as Trump has reshaped American democracy, Bukele’s critics say that lack of U.S. pressure and praise from Trump officials has offered the Salvadoran leader an opening to more rapidly consolidate power.
In just a span of months, Bukele’s government has detained some of it’s most vocal critics, violently repressed a peaceful protest, and passed a “foreign agents” law similar to those used by governments in Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Belarus to silence dissent by exerting pressure on organizations that rely on overseas funding.
More than 100 human rights activists, academics, journalists and lawyers have fled El Salvador in recent months, saying they were forced to chose between exile or prison.
