The Economist is listed as a “flawed democracy” and notes that El Salvador has fallen from 6.15 to 5.9 in 77th place, out of 167 countries. It is the only country in Latin America that has been relegated from one regime to another.
The vulnerability of democracy in El Salvador is under a magnifying glass worldwide. Recently, The Economist’s Intelligence Unit Democracy Index report highlighted the worrying situation.
The document describes that in 2020 El Salvador had a notorious bias towards authoritarianism. In a section entitled “Authoritarianism in El Salvador: A Dictator in the Making?” points out that the president, Nayib Bukele, appeared to be ignoring his administration’s checks and balances when he disobeyed rulings of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court in April 2020, calling for fundamental rights to be respected in quarantine measures before the arrests circulate in the streets.
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The Economist report also states that he “surrounded the Legislative Assembly with military and police to put pressure on the legislature to approve a $ 100 million loan.”
The Economist is listed as a “flawed democracy” and notes that El Salvador has fallen from 6.15 to 5.9 in 77th place, out of 167 countries. It is the only country in Latin America that has been relegated from one regime to another.
The freedoms will decrease in 2020 as a result of pandemic measures
The global average score for the Democracy Index decreased from 5.44 in 2019 to 5.37 in 2020, on a scale of 0 to 10. This is the worst score since 2006 since the Democracy Index was evaluated. In Latin America, the index fell from 6.13 to 6.09 for the fifth year in a row.
Democratic freedoms have diminished in nearly 70% of the world’s countries by 2020 due to restrictions stemming from the fight against the pandemic, according to a study by British group The Economist published Wednesday.
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“The coronavirus pandemic has caused a massive downturn in democratic freedoms, pushing the index’s average score to historic lows,” said this study, published by the British weekly’s research unit.
The phenomenon is global and very pronounced in autocratic regimes in Africa or the Middle East, but “the repression of individual freedoms in advanced democracies was the most striking of 2020,” he emphasizes.
“The voluntary abandonment of fundamental freedoms by millions was perhaps one of the most notorious events of this extraordinary year (…) but we cannot conclude that the high level of acceptance of the imprisonment measures means that people are devaluing towards freedom,” said Joan Hoey, head of the study.
“They simply ruled, based on evidence …, that avoiding catastrophic deaths justified a temporary loss of freedom,” he said.
Above 8 countries are considered “full democracies”. This category includes the top 23 countries. The best is Norway with an index of 9.81, but there are also Switzerland or Canada. France, on the other hand, is in 24th place.
The research unit of the British group The Economist calculates the democracy index annually. It is calculated on the basis of 10 according to 60 criteria, grouped into five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, government functioning, political participation and political culture.
The overall result is 5.37, “the worst global average since the index was created in 2006”. The largest decrease was registered by Mali, and Taiwan was the one that increased the most.
The worst rated country in 2020 is North Korea, with a democracy index of 1.08, ranked among “authoritarian regimes”.