Critics are sounding alarm bells after El Salvador changed its constitution to extend presidential terms to six years and allow President Bukele to run for reelection indefinitely. 

Mr. Bukele’s party, which controls the country’s legislative branch, acted Thursday to raise the presidential term from five years and abolished a rule that barred any president from seeking reelection.

Mr. Bukele had already bucked the constitution when he ran, and won, a second term last year. The country’s supreme court, filled with his allies, used a controversial interpretation of the constitution to allow him to run again.

“Today, democracy has died in El Salvador,” opposition Republican National Alliance MP Marcela Villatoro said. Ms. Villatro added that El Salvador is going down the path of Venezuela, a country whose institutions are being hijacked by its current administration.

Mr. Bukele “is very clearly following the path of leaders who use their popularity to concentrate power to undermine the rule of law and eventually to establish a dictatorship,” a deputy director of Human Rights Watch, Juan Pappier, told the news service UPI.

But supporters say the changes will give more voice to citizens of El Salvador.

“It will be the people who decide, as many times as they wish, whether to continue supporting the path of transformation that our nation is experiencing,” lawmaker Ana Figueroa, who proposed the amendments, said on X.

Mr. Bukele – described by some critics as an “authoritarian” – has been lionized by conservatives around the world since he launched a brutal crackdown on gang violence, making El Salvador one of the safest nations in the Western Hemisphere.

But that safety has come at a high cost, according to opponents. The country has been under a state of emergency since March 2022.

Human rights groups say thousands of people have been arbitrarily swept up in mass arrests. Amnesty International has stated that gang violence is being replaced with state violence. 

President Trump is among those who have embraced the Salvadoran president. “I have great respect for him,” Mr. Trump has previously said.

Mr. Bukele, who once described himself as “the world’s coolest dictator,” has grown close to the Trump administration and has accepted the transfer of planeloads of American deportees to a “mega jail” that was built in 2023 and can house 40,000 inmates.

That is the facility that Salvadorian migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia was sent to after the Trump administration accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang. He was later returned to the United States but now faces federal migrant smuggling charges.