Politics of El Salvador

El Salvador has a multi-party system. Three political parties Nuevas Ideas (NI), the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) have tended to dominate elections since the end of the civil war. ARENA candidates won four consecutive presidential elections until the election of Mauricio Funes of the FMLN in March 2009.^[3] In 2014, he was followed by another FMLN president, Salvador Sánchez Cerén.^[4]

The 2019 election was won by Nayib Bukele as the candidate of the center-right Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA) party. In February 2021, El Salvador's legislative election was an important breakthrough. The new party, founded by President Bukele, Nuevas Ideas (NI), won around two-thirds of votes with its allies (NI–GANA). His party won a supermajority of 56 seats in the 84-seat legislature. Bukele became the country's most powerful leader in three decades.^[5]

On 4 February 2024, President Nayib Bukele, won re-election with 83% of the vote in general election.^[6] His party Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas) won 58 of the El Salvador parliament's 60 seats.^[7]

Before the Bukele era, the departments of the central region, especially the capital and the coastal regions, known as departamentos rojos, or red departments, were mostly left-wing while the departamentos azules, or blue departments, in the east, western and highland regions were generally conservative.

El Salvador elects its head of state, the President of El Salvador, directly through a fixed-date general election whose winner is decided by absolute majority. If an absolute majority is not achieved by any candidate in the first round of a presidential election, then a run-off pool election is conducted 30 days later between the two candidates who obtained the most votes in the first round. The president serves a five-year term. He is barred from immediately succeeding himself, though previously elected presidents may run for a second, non-consecutive term.

In September 2021, El Salvador's Supreme Court decided to allow President Nayib Bukele to run for a second term in the 2024 election, despite the Constitution prohibiting the president from serving two consecutive terms in office. The decision was made by judges appointed to the court by President Bukele.^[8] On 1 June 2024, President Nayib Bukele was sworn in for the second five-year term.^[9]

Salvadorans also elect a single-chamber, unicameral national legislature, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador, of 60 members (deputies) elected by open-list proportional representation for three-year terms, with the possibility of immediate re-election.

The Judiciary, headed by the Supreme Court, is composed of 15 judges, one of them being elected as President of the Judiciary.

El Salvador is a member of the United Nations and several of its specialized agencies, the Organization of American States (OAS), the Central American Common Market (CACM), the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), and the Central American Integration System (SICA). It actively participates in the Central American Security Commission (CASC), which seeks to promote regional arms control.

El Salvador also is a member of the World Trade Organization and is pursuing regional free trade agreements. An active participant in the Summit of the Americas process, El Salvador chairs a working group on market access under the Free Trade Area of the Americas initiative.

• Legislative Assembly of El Salvador Archived 2015-09-23 at the Wayback Machine
• Presidency of El Salvador
• Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador Archived 2012-05-18 at the Wayback Machine
• Changing Colors in El Salvador^{[permanent dead link‍]} by Emma Vawter, The Yale Globalist, May 11, 2009