Bukele Seeks Third Term in February Facing No Opposition

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Nayib Bukele has been the de-facto president of El Salvador since June 2024, buoyed by high popularity, his own constitutional rewrite allowing indefinite reelection, and a close alliance with the Donald Trump administration.

Yet last December, he told a Spanish YouTuber that, “if it were up to me, I’d stay for another ten years.” In fact, Bukele single-handedly controls all state institutions and has uncontested power over El Salvador’s political future.

He’ll seek a third term on February 28 with the ruling party Nuevas Ideas, his political project and the electoral vehicle through which he ended decades of political pluralism in the country.

He didn’t make the announcement himself. Instead, his cousin Xavi Zablah Bukele —the president of Nuevas Ideas— did, rather quietly, in a post on X.

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Since before Joe Biden left office, the international community has refrained from criticizing Bukele’s unconstitutional reelection, viewing it as a foregone conclusion. Even El Salvador’s tiny opposition mostly avoids the subject.

Yet it remains a sore spot. “Almost all countries have amended their constitutions,” Bukele wrote on X recently.

Bukele’s party has held a legislative supermajority since 2021, illegally removing constitutional magistrates that year and controlling national decision-making.

Malcolm Cartagena, a longtime electoral expert and coordinator of the non-profit Acción Ciudadana’s Center for Politics, said the 2021 removals “completely broke the balance of power.”

Since then, Bukele has only increased his electoral control. He drastically reduced the number of municipalities and legislative seats, while increasing his party’s share to the point where opposition parties hold only a handful of offices nationwide.

Now, Bukele is doubling down on the diaspora vote, where in 2024 he received almost all presidential votes. In May, as part of an array of constitutional amendments, six out of 60 legislative seats were allotted to represent Salvadorans in the diaspora.

The reforms also allowed indefinite presidential reelection, extended the presidential term from five to six years, and moved up the presidential elections from 2029 to 2027, while Trump is still in office.

As for campaign finance, new rules within Nuevas Ideas allow the party to intervene in mayors’ decisions. The state has also refused to pay public financing to opposition parties.

El Salvador’s vote-counting system is fragile. In 2024, the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal reported irregularities and asserted that the collapse of the transmission system could have been intentionally provoked.

Those allegations were never thoroughly investigated. Now, the new TSE president is Roxana Soriano, a ruling party insider and relative of Legislative Assembly President Ernesto Castro.

“The entire electoral process is flawed and lacks integrity,” Cartagena told El Faro English.

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If Bukele completes a third term in 2033, he will have been in power for 14 years, longer than dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez from 1931 to 1944.

According to the 2025 Global Electoral Integrity Report, El Salvador has the third lowest electoral integrity rating in the Americas, after Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The current electoral system was designed “to pave the way for the ruling family to remain in power,” said Noah Bullock, executive director of the human rights organization Cristosal.

A June poll by Central American University (UCA) found Bukele maintains 80.5 percent approval, but also that most Salvadorans believe criticizing the government can have consequences.

To compete or not to compete

This panorama has put El Salvador’s opposition in a conundrum. Only two parties have fielded presidential candidates so far—the traditional leftist FMLN and rightist Arena— while a rift is forming in the centrist Vamos party.

In recent interviews with El Faro English, Vamos legislator Claudia Ortiz and the party’s secretary general, Cesia Rivas, clashed over whether to form electoral alliances with other groups and sectors regardless of ideology.

Ortiz, who called for an opposition alliance, said she faces not only “the dictatorship” in El Salvador but also differences “in vision” with Vamos leadership.

Last week, she announced a run for secretary general of the party with her internal coalition, “Avancemos.”

On the other hand, Rivas says Vamos should eschew candidates with histories in traditional parties. She announced her candidacy for the same position on the “Unidos por El Salvador” coalition.

Perhaps no better sign of the times is the FMLN, the former guerrilla front turned party that governed El Salvador from 2009 to 2019, when Bukele became president. In 2024, they were left without a single seat in the legislature or a single mayor’s office.

This time their presidential candidate is a prominent doctor and unionist Rafael Aguirre, who has criticized Bukele’s cuts to public health and A.I. pivot.

He has hedged that while he does not agree with presidential reelection, it is now constitutional because the Salvadoran Constitution has already been amended.He called the state of exception a “constitutional tool,” but said it has been “overused.”

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“I believe there are several people in the FMLN leadership who are allied with Bukele,” Luis Parada, a 2024 presidential candidate,  told El Faro English. “Bukele, to maintain a semblance of democracy and elections, needs more candidates,” he said.

Arena, a hard-right party that governed El Salvador from 1989 to 2009, has been totally eclipsed by Bukele’s right-wing project. They currently have two legislative seats and one mayor’s office.

Arena’s presidential ticket is noticeably low-profile: former legislator Mayteé Iraheta and municipal official Verónica Henríquez.

At a recent event announcing the party ticket, longtime Arena mayor Milagro Navas said “fear is for cowards, not for Arena.”

Arena and the FMLN combined are projected to receive just 2.3 percent of presidential votes, according to UCA polling.

Bullock said no other candidates are competing because, under the state of exception, ”the government can arrest anyone it wants and there’s no institution to protect your rights.”

Last year, El Faro concluded there were dozens of political prisoners in El Salvador, including prominent former members of Arena and the FMLN.

Referring to the presidential race, Parada argued that “no true opposition party should participate. If they do, it’s because they’re in cahoots with Bukele.”

Ortiz told El Faro she does want to run for president, but down the road. “We’re navigating times when the authoritarian and the democratic are mixed together,” she said. But “legitimacy and sovereignty come from the people, and the best time to express that is during elections.”

Bukele and allies, she added, ”can’t control popular will. Their legitimacy is at stake, and they know their hegemony is, too.”

This article appeared in the El Faro English newsletter. Subscribe here for more journalism translating Central America.