SAN SALVADOR, Dec 29 (Reuters) – El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who came to power in 2019 and is now serving a second term which critics have called unconstitutional, said he was open to staying in power for another decade.
“If it were up to me, I would stay for 10 more years,” Bukele said in a video interview published by Spanish YouTuber TheGrefg on Monday. He noted that he had initially agreed with his wife that he would leave politics in 2029.
El Salvador is expected to hold its next presidential election in 2027, to decide who will run the country through to 2033.
Bukele will be eligible to run for a third term, after the ruling party-controlled Congress pushed through a constitutional reform in July to abolish term limits, bring forward the next election and extend presidential terms from five to six years.
Legal experts at home and abroad have questioned the legality of Bukele’s attempts to extend his term. The country’s constitution prohibits presidents’ consecutive reelection in at least six of its articles.
Early in 2024, Bukele won his second term with a landslide victory despite a constitutional ban.
The wildly popular 44-year-old publicist enjoys some of the world’s highest approval ratings thanks to a hardline approach to crime which has helped drastically reduce murder rates.
Critics say this has come at the expense of civil rights and people have been arbitrarily detained, tortured and even killed in custody.
Bukele, who once described himself on his Twitter account as “the world’s coolest dictator,” said he did not plan to establish a dictatorship in El Salvador and it would be up to Salvadorans to decide whether he should continue in power.
(Reporting by Gerardo Arbaiza; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by David Gregorio)
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