El Salvador’s parliament sacks the country’s top judges
President Nayib Bukele is proving even less of a democrat than his opponents feared
WHEN NAYIB BUKELE’S New Ideas (NI) party won a sweeping majority in El Salvador’s elections in February, fans of democracy held their breath. Mr Bukele, who with a 90% approval rating is the most popular president in Latin America, has shown little regard for checks and balances since he came to power in 2019. On May 1st, the day new lawmakers first took their seats in the legislative assembly, fears about the 39-year-old president appeared well founded. The assembly promptly voted to sack the attorney-general and the five judges who sit in the constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court, which oversees most laws. Mr Bukele crowed on Twitter: “And the Salvadorean people, through their representatives, said ‘DISMISSED!’”
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Bukele’s bulldozer”
From the May 8th 2021 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionMore from The Americas
Canada, China, Mexico and the art of retaliation
The three victims of Donald Trump’s trade war use different playbooks
Armed groups are terrorising Colombia’s border with Venezuela
The government has declared a “state of internal commotion” in response to the worst humanitarian crisis in decades
Brazil’s ragged finances are holding back its green ambitions
The transformation of its largest private port has lessons for the country’s aspirations
Donald Trump turns an angry gaze south
Relations with Central America are likely to worsen
Can Brazil’s left survive without Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva?
Brazil’s current president, a titan of the Latin American left, has no apparent heirs
Donald Trump is targeting Mexico like no other country
The United States’ southern neighbour is bracing for a wave of deportees and trapped migrants