The seizure of the Legislative Assembly, the signs of corruption and the concentration of power led the British magazine to downgrade the country.
The intelligence unit of the British weekly The Economist’s diagnosis for the democracy of El Salvador is very discouraging.
“No other country in Latin America has turned to authoritarianism in 2020 as much as El Salvador,” the magazine notes in its annual Global Democracy Index.
In fact, the El Salvador subsection of the report in question is entitled “Authoritarianism in El Salvador: A Dictator in Progress?”, And gives an account of the country’s path of democracy.
In his measurement, El Salvador was no longer classified as a country with a flawed democracy and became one with a “hybrid regime”. This implies a mixture of democratic institutions with practices typical of authoritarianism.
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In these regimes, there are often election irregularities, government pressure and intimidation from opposition parties, widespread corruption and institutional weakness. Likewise, civil society is weakened, the media is systematically attacked and the independence of the judge is affected.
According to observers at home and abroad, the government of El Salvador meets some of the characteristics of the hybrid regimes described by The Economist. Among them the systematic attack on the independent press, the blows to the opposition and the hate speech that culminates in physical violence, a refusal to answer and an instrumentalization of the security forces to protect officials or people close to the government.
In the weekly index, El Salvador does well when it comes to elections and political pluralism. However, political culture is one of the areas where it falters most. It is followed by the workings of the government, which is feeding on the strong signs of corruption in the current government. Political participation and civil liberties are also weak spots in the country.
SEE: We regret that Bukele’s response to the Constitutional Chamber is “weapons and violence,” said Portillo Cuadra.
Only authoritarianism is found under this category of hybrid regimes, where the absence of political pluralism is consolidated. Many of these countries are dictatorships.
Of the 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, El Salvador ranks 17 and is surrounded by other countries with hybrid regimes such as Honduras, Bolivia, Haiti and Guatemala. Below are only Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela as authoritarian states.
9F
The armed takeover of the Legislative Palace on February 9, 2020 is one of the main signs of democratic decline for the country in this global measure of democracy.
That day, President Bukele commanded a military platoon to the Blue Room, where he reached the President of the Legislative President without invitation and by force and prayed, while military personnel approached the residences of the opposition representatives to intimidate them and give them to pressure to convene a meeting unconstitutional.
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Despite fears of a coup, the president left Congress and said God had asked him for patience. However, he crossed a line that no one had crossed, not even in the armed conflict: the militarization of Congress.
This earned the president a lot of criticism and accusations that he endangered constitutional order. For those who still saw signs of renewal in his mandate, reality prevailed: the president has a precarious democratic predisposition. With this background, and following his stance of opposition to institutionality, The Economist in its May issue dedicated an article calling Bukele “the first Millennium Dictator.”
Consolidation of power
One of the main points on which the British weekly sees a dangerous path to authoritarianism in El Salvador is the excessive concentration of power. In addition to closing spaces for the opposition and refusing to engage in dialogue with the Legislative Assembly to find, for example, measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic, Nayib Bukele’s government has taken over the Institute for Access to Public Information and is trying to they are silencing opposition votes in an attempt to generate an “official vote”.
During the early months of the pandemic, the government unilaterally attempted to issue executive orders that contravened fundamental guarantees, which cannot be curtailed without the help of the legislature. When the Constitutional Chamber showed him this, the president openly defied these orders.
This is another point The Economist considers a step towards President Bukele’s authoritarianism: the disobedience of court orders.
Finally, the magazine dangerously sees corruption gaining space in El Salvador, particularly in emergency purchases to attend the pandemic. The aggravating factor, according to the weekly, is that this has not affected President Bukele’s popularity. If this continues, they warn that the ruling party could face even fewer controls in the elections.
“If the president takes this path, there is a real risk that Salvadoran democracy will suffer lasting blows,” he concludes.