(Q24N) San Salvador. The government of El Salvador asked this Thursday to open a national debate to reform the Constitution and adapt it to the “new realities”, without touching key articles such as the alternation in power.
“A debate that allows updating the Constitution of the Republic is what the government of El Salvador proposes to overcome some anachronisms that founded the current Magna Carta,” the Presidency said in a statement.
According to the government, the Constitution, written in 1983, “has errors, contradictions and gaps”, which the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) has had to correct.
Debate on amendments to the Basic Law opens up “favorable scenarios” to review how second-degree officials are elected, including those in charge of directing the Attorney General’s Office, the Court of Accounts (comptroller) and judges of the Supreme Court.
The government also intends to incorporate into the future Constitution the human right to water, the democratization of the political and electoral system, and the modernization of institutions.
President Nayib Bukele delegated to Vice President Félix Ulloa, a lawyer by profession, the task of coordinating proposals for reform.
The idea is that political parties, civil society, academics, professional unions, churches and organizations of all currents participate in the debate, according to the statement.
The Bukele government clarified that “there is no proposal to reform and change the political system (republican) of the country, the system of government and much less eliminate the alternation in the exercise of the Presidency.”
The Constitution establishes that reform of its content must be proposed by at least 10 deputies, of the 84 that make up Parliament.
It specifies that a reform must be approved by Congress with the votes of half plus one of the deputies, and must be ratified by the next Parliament with the votes of at least two-thirds of the legislators.
El Salvador will elect the members of the next Legislative Assembly on February 28, 2021, as well as the mayors of the 262 municipalities.
