2024-05-01 05:28:37
The Congress of El Salvador, dominated by allies of re-elected President Nayib Bukele, approved this Monday a controversial reform to accelerate changes to the Constitution.
The reform “was approved” with the votes of 66 of the 84 deputies of the unicameral Congress, reported its head, the ruling party Ernesto Castro.
The Constitution, in force since 1983, establishes that a reform must be approved in the first instance by “half plus one” of the deputies and then “ratified” by the following legislature with “two-thirds” of the votes.
With the reform introduced, it is now included that the same legislature will be able to ratify the changes to the Magna Carta “with the vote of three quarters” of the deputies, who will be 60 in the next Congress that takes office on Wednesday.
“We are not taking anything away from the Constitution, what we are doing is adapting it to the changes that the new reality demands,” Christian Guevara, head of the party of the ruling New Ideas party, told the plenary session.
Critics of the reform maintain that Bukele’s party will now be able to modify the Constitution “at will.”
«They bend the law as they want. What Nuevas Ideas is doing is easing the way to approve reforms without having to wait […]. “They have already calculated that they have the votes to do it,” independent analyst Carlos Araujo told AFP.
“They are going to introduce constitutional reforms at will, without analysis, without discussion,” he stated.
Opposition deputy Marcela Villatoro, from the ARENA party, lamented that “Nuevas Ideas does everything without consultation, imposing its agenda, without caring that they threaten legal security, since they modify laws at will.”
In the new legislature, Bukele’s party will have 54 of the 60 deputies.
The president was re-elected on February 4 with 85% of the votes.
© Agence France-Presse