CRIPDES statement – Bukele February 2020

We denounce the blow to democracy that President Bukele perpetrated in the Legislative Assembly

 

The Association for the Development of El Salvador (CRIPDES), representing more than 300 communities, makes our concern known after President Nayib Bukele’s attack on the Legislative Assembly on Sunday, February 9 of this year.

We consider it a serious Human Rights violation and a blow to Salvadoran democracy. Therefore, as an organization that is looking to improve the lives of the most vulnerable communities in the country, we believe that such events put the Salvadoran people in danger. We cannot allow a step back towards the militarization and repression that El Salvador already lived during the armed conflict.

As CRIPDES we join the demands that social organizations and popular movements have raised around this act, demanding the following from the Government of the Republic:

• That he be responsible for the acts that have taken place, regarding the attempt to militarize the installations of the Legislative Assembly, which represents an abuse of power and corrodes the constitutional order in its attempt to strike democracy.

• Prioritize the problems and demands that the country has faced for years and that threaten the rural communities of our country, such as the approval of a General Water Law, reforming the pension system and minimum wage and not just financing public security.

• The reprehensible presidential call to the insurrection. As expressed by former Human Rights attorney, David Morales, this right – enshrined in Article 87 of our Constitution – is for the people, when rulers violate the constitutional order; and not vice versa. Bukele cannot call to insurrection. It is the people who will have to exercise this right if he continues his authoritarian, antidemocratic and violating behavior of the constitutional order of the country.

• We demand that President Bukele fulfill his constitutional function of seeking peace and social harmony; and not to use popular support for “coup adventures” and authoritarian drifts, but to deepen democracy and responsibly address the structural problems of the country through dialogue, allowing citizen participation, respecting institutionality and guaranteeing the rule of law.

• We call on all progressive organizations, democratic sectors and the population in general to be attentive to defend democracy and demand structural transformations aimed at dismantling the neoliberal model.

 

San Salvador, February 10, 2020

(READ IT IN SPANISH HERE)

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