The seizure of the Legislative Assembly, signs of corruption and the concentration of power lead the British magazine to degrade the country rating.
The diagnosis of the intelligence unit of the British weekly The Economist for El Salvador’s democracy is deeply discouraging.
“No other Latin American country turned to both authoritarianism in 2020 and El Salvador,” the magazine notes in its annual Global Democracy Index.
In fact, El Salvador’s subsection of the report in question has been titled “Authoritarianism in El Salvador: A Dictator in Process?”, And it accounts for the path away from democracy that the country is traversing.
In its measurement, El Salvador ceased to be categorized as a country with a failing democracy and became one with a “hybrid regime.” This implies a mixture of democratic institutions with practices inherent in authoritarianism.
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In these regimes, there are usually irregularities in elections, pressure and harassment of government in opposition parties, widespread corruption and institutional weakness. It also weakens civil society, there is a systematic attack on the media and judicial independence is hit.
According to observers inside and outside the country, the government of El Salvador meets several 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 is overflowing towards physical violence, a refusal to be held accountable and an instrumentalization of the security forces to shield officials or characters. close to the government.
In the index of the weekly, El Salvador has a good result in terms of elections and political pluralism. However, political culture is one of the areas where it weakens the most. It is followed by the functioning of government, which feeds on strong signs of corruption in current management. Political participation and civil liberties are also weak areas of the country.
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Below this category of hybrid regime is now only authoritarianism, 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 is in 17th place and is surrounded by other countries with hybrid regimes such as Honduras, Bolivia, Haiti and Guatemala. Below these are only Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela as the authoritarian states.
9F
The armed takeover of the Legislative Palace on February 9, 2020 is one of the main signs of democratic setback for the country in this global measurement of democracy.
That day, President Bukele commanded a military squad in the Blue Hall, where without invitation and by force he reached the chair of the legislative president and prayed, while military personnel approached the residences of opposition deputies to intimidate him. and pressuring them to heed an unconstitutional convocation.
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Despite the fear 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 even in the armed conflict: militarizing Congress.
This earned the president great criticism and remarks for jeopardizing the constitutional order. For those who still saw signs of renewal in his term, the reality prevailed: the president has a precarious democratic aptitude. Against this background, and following his attitude of defiance of institutionalization, in its May issue, The Economist devoted an article calling Bukele “the first Millennial dictator.”
Consolidation of power
One of the main points in which the British weekly sees a dangerous path to authoritarianism in El Salvador is the excessive concentration of power. In addition to closing spaces to the opposition and refusing to engage in dialogue with the Legislature to find, for example, measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic, the Nayib Bukele government has taken the Institute of Access to Public Information and seeks to silence opposing voices in an attempt to generate an “official voice”.
During the first months of the pandemic, the government sought to unilaterally issue executive decrees that violated fundamental guarantees, which cannot be limited without competition from the Legislature. When the Constitutional Chamber made him see it, the president openly challenged those orders.
This is another point that The Economist considers a step towards authoritarianism by President Bukele: disobedience to court orders.
Finally, the magazine sees danger as corruption is gaining ground in El Salvador, particularly in emergency shopping to address the pandemic. The aggravating factor, according to the weekly, is that this has not affected President Bukele’s popularity. If they continue like this, they warn that in the elections, the bureaucracy could even face fewer controls.
“If the president follows this path, there is a real risk that there will be permanent blows to Salvadoran democracy,” he concludes.