The Legislative Assembly of El Salvador, dominated by the ruling party Nuevas Ideas (NI), approved this Tuesday a constitutional reform that allows life imprisonment for 'murderers, rapists, and terrorists' proposed by the government of President Nayib Bukele, which must subsequently be ratified. 'Prison for debts, infamous, proscriptive, and any kind of torture is prohibited. Life imprisonment will only be imposed on murderers, rapists, and terrorists,' says the reform to the second paragraph of article 27 of the Constitution, approved in a plenary session by 59 deputies from NI, their allies, and including two from the opposition, out of the 60 that make up this body. After its approval, which was given without prior study or debate, the Congress must ratify the reform in another plenary session for it to come into force and change the text of the Constitution. The approved reform was sent to the Political Commission of the Legislative Body for study, so it will be approved in a future plenary session. According to deputy Suecy Callejas, of Nuevas Ideas, this reform 'aims to approve life imprisonment for people who belong to gangs, who have committed homicides and femicides, and who are also rapists'. 'This reform is the guarantee that those who destroyed Salvadoran families, violated innocents, and sown terror, will never again walk our streets,' she pointed out. In the vote on the constitutional reform, for the first time, the opposition Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena, right) added its votes to this type of initiative. Hours before the approval, the Minister of Security, Gustavo Villatoro, said in the presentation of the initiative that 'the country we yearn for requires that in our society there be no murderers or rapists,' so they asked to lift the ban on life imprisonment. The Legislative Assembly must also give the green light to a series of reforms to the Penal Code, Juvenile Penal Law, Law Against Acts of Terrorism, and other secondary ones to align them with the new wording of the Magna Carta. In January 2025, the Legislative Assembly ratified a controversial reform that allows express changes to the Constitution in the same legislature; previously, constitutional amendments required the vote of two different legislatures. With this amendment, 45 of the 60 deputies are needed to approve and ratify -on the same day- reforms, and with this the ruling party has endorsed indefinite presidential election, among other changes to the Constitution. The Bukele government's proposal to allow life sentences comes a few days before El Salvador completes four years under an exception regime approved in March 2022 to combat gangs, accused of committing the majority of homicides in a country that for years was considered one of the most violent in the world. Under the state of exception, more than 91,300 people accused of being gang members or having ties to these groups have been imprisoned, and at least 500 detainees have died in the custody of state agents, which has raised alarms from human rights defenders.
