El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly approved constitutional changes on July 31, allowing a president to seek reelection indefinitely and extending presidential terms from five to six years, paving the way for President Nayib Bukele to serve potential future terms.

Lawmaker Ana Figueroa, of Bukele’s New Ideas party, which holds a supermajority in the legislature, proposed the bill that amends five articles of the constitution, including eliminating the second round of a presidential election in which the top two vote-getters face off.

Lawmakers voted 57 to 3 in favor of the bill.

In a statement on X, the Legislative Assembly said the amendments aim to “stabilize electoral cycles, reduce costs, and increase legal certainty in order to attract investment, promote greater economic and social development, and avoid a state of permanent campaigning.”

Bukele’s current term is set to end June 1, 2029, but Figueroa proposed it should instead end June 1, 2027, so that presidential and congressional elections follow the same schedule. The change would also allow Bukele to seek reelection to a longer term, two years earlier.

“With this initiative, we are opening a new chapter in El Salvador’s democratic history,” Figueroa said in a statement posted to X. “It will be the people who decide, as many times as they wish, whether to continue supporting the path of transformation our nation is experiencing.”

Some lawmakers in Congress who opposed the changes cited concerns that they would weaken democracy in the country and solidify one-party rule.

“Tonight, democracy has died,” lawmaker Marcela Villatoro of the opposition Republican National Alliance (ARENA) said.

Bukele was first elected as president of El Salvador in 2019. He secured a second term in office in 2024 after El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal allowed him to run again, despite the country’s constitution prohibiting it.

Following his reelection last year, Bukele told reporters he “didn’t think a constitutional reform would be necessary,” but did not answer questions regarding whether or not he would try to run for a third term.

Bukele posted to X on Aug. 2, explaining his view on the change.

“[Ninety percent] of developed countries allow the indefinite reelection of their head of government, and no one bats an eye,” he wrote. “But when a small, poor country like El Salvador tries to do the same, suddenly it’s the end of democracy.”

He said that while the political establishment may want to argue that their “parliamentary system isn’t the same as a presidential one,” like in El Salvador, that “technicality” in his view doesn’t justify what he called a “double standard.”

“Because if El Salvador declared itself a parliamentary monarchy with the exact same rules as the UK, Spain, or Denmark, they still wouldn’t support it. In fact, they would go ballistic if that happened. Why? Because the problem isn’t the system, it’s the fact that a poor country dares to act like a sovereign one. You’re not supposed to do what they do. You’re supposed to do what you’re told. And you’re expected to stay in your lane,” he said.

Bukele has seen his popularity soar in El Salvador, thanks, in part, to his government’s crackdown on violence and powerful street gangs, including the construction of the maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a mega-prison roughly 72 kilometers (45 miles) east of the capital, San Salvador.

In 2015, El Salvador had 6,656 homicides, making it one of the world’s deadliest countries. In 2023, there were 214 homicides. El Salvador closed 2024 with a record low of 114 homicides.

In February, Bukele agreed to accept deported illegal immigrants from the United States, including members of gangs such as El Salvador’s MS-13 and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, accompanied by Salvadoran Minister of Justice and Public Security Héctor Gustavo Villatoro (R), tours the Terrorist Confinement Center (CECOT) in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 26, 2025. (Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)

“No country’s ever made an offer of friendship such as this,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters at the time, according to a transcript issued by the State Department.

“You can think about it: any unlawful immigrant, illegal immigrant in the United States who’s a dangerous criminal – MS-13, Tren de Aragua, whatever it may be – he has offered his jails so we can send them here and he will put them in his jails. And he’s also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentences in the United States, even if they’re U.S. citizens or legal residents. We are just profoundly grateful.”

At the time, Bukele confirmed in a statement that he agreed to house U.S. criminal deportees in El Salvador’s mega-prison in exchange for an unspecified fee from the United States.

“We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system,” Bukele said in a Feb. 4 statement posted to X.

Though Bukele’s crackdown on crime has seen homicides in the country plummet, it has sparked concern among human rights groups, who say innocent people have been caught up in the mass arrests.

Amnesty International has accused El Salvador’s government of “implementing a systematic state policy of massive and arbitrary deprivation of liberty,” adding that more than 85,000 individuals remain behind bars at CECOT “without sufficient admissible evidence,” and are “the victims of a judicial system now transformed into a tool for collective punishment and widespread repression.”

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

This article has been updated with the latest statement from Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.