04 May For the life of democracy in El Salvador

 San Salvador, May 1st 2021

 In the face of the assault on the separation of powers through the illegitimate dismissal of the magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice and the Attorney General of the Republic by 64 deputies of the Legislative Assembly, on the same day of their taking office, the undersigned civil society organizations: 

1. Categorically CONDEMN this coup, endorsed by President Bukele and carried out by parliamentarians of the Nuevas Ideas, GANA, PCN and PDC parties, who, through the co-option of justice, seek to consummate an unquestionable authoritarian political project in which all powers respond to a single person. 

2. DENOUNCE that the legal coating of the dismissals is a crude simulation that does not withstand the slightest analysis of coherence, breaks the constitutional order and violates the right of all Salvadorans to an independent justice and therefore we also call the Constitutional Chamber to also declare the unconstitutionality of the dismissal of the Attorney General of the Republic to reestablish constitutional order. 

3. DISAVOW the mandate of people who have usurped by force the functions of constitutionally elected bodies and whose actions will be illegitimate and constitute crimes and other personal liabilities. 

4. SUPPORT the brave judges and magistrates of the Republic – including the rest of the magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice – to reject this usurpation of the Constitutional Chamber and protect judicial independence. 

5. REMIND the Armed Forces and the National Civil Police that their loyalty is to the rights of all citizens, democracy and the Constitution. 

6. CALL on the United Nations, the Organization of American States and the entire international community to express their categorical rejection of the arbitrary takeover of institutions by President Bukele and the member of the Legislature who carried out these decisions, not to legitimize the people that usurp the positions of legitimately elected officials and to activate all legal and diplomatic means of condemnation and punishment against a government that has abandoned all democratic convictions, including the Inter-American Democratic Charter. 

7. INVITE the public to actively defend their rights to a life in democracy and to independent justice and to firmly demand the immediate reestablishment of constitutional order. 

Without citizen participation there is no democracy!