Extremist supporters of Salvadoran President NayibBukele heeded his call to converge on the country’s parliament Sunday after lawmakers refused to gather to vote on a $109 million loan to better equip the country’s security forces, sharply increasing tensions between the leader and the opposition-controlled legislature.
Bukele in an emotional speech appealed to his supporters, who had threatened to remove opposition lawmakers from the legislature by force. He said that after praying amid soldiers and police, he decided to ask for patience from his supporters and set a deadline of one week for lawmakers to approve the bill.
President Bukele told them to be back in the streets within a week if MPs did not debate the bill.His political opponents accused him of threatening them and turning increasingly authoritarian.
He gave the law-makers seven days to back his loan plan but there was no action taken, consequently the agitated supports of Bukele entered the building as he was about to address lawmakers regarding approval of $109m loan for betterment of the country. Theopposition politicians called the appearance of armed men in parliament an unprecedented act of intimidation.
President Bukele took office in June 2019, pledging to tackle the legacy of gang violence and corruption in the impoverished Central American nation.
The 38-year-old leader wants to use the loan to improve the equipment of police and the armed forces in the fight against crime but the loan has not been approved yet. In particular, the funds would be used to buy police vehicles, uniforms, surveillance equipment and a helicopter.
“If we wanted to press the button, we would press the button” and remove lawmakers from the legislature, he told supporters outside the building. “But I asked God and God told me: patience, patience, patience.”
The opposition FMLN party accused Bukele of intimidation and acting like “a dictatorship” for trying to force approval of the loan.
Addressing his supporters, Bukele said polls suggest his New Ideas party would win a majority in the new legislature in 2021’s voting, so there is no need for them to break into it by force now.
“If these scoundrels do not approve (the loan for), the Territorial Control Plan, we will summon them here on Sunday,” setting a week deadline.
Citing El Salvador’s constitution, Bukele’s government had called an extraordinary meeting of the legislative assembly to debate approval of the loan but lawmakers rejected the call, saying it was inadmissible.
In response, Bukele invoked article 87 of the charter that recognizes the people’s right to insurrection, “for the sole purpose of restoring the constitutional order,” and summoned his supporters to the legislature.
The government deployed the police and the military, and since Saturday they have cordoned off the area around the legislative building. The Armed Forces and National Civil Police issued pronouncements stating their loyalty to Bukele.
Meanwhile, the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance, which has said it will not vote for the bill, asked the Organization of American States to activate mechanisms to prevent the breakdown of the constitutional order in El Salvador and “act to immediately suspend the self-coup process under way.”
The leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, issued a statement demanding the president “stop his threats which are typical of a dictatorship.”
The legislative assembly is made up of 84 deputies with 37 from the Nationalist Republican Alliance and 23 from the FMLN, giving them a majority in the body.
