Global Courant
The proposal, promoted by President Nayib Bukele, was approved with the votes of 66 deputies out of 84 in Congress, bringing the number of parliamentarians down to 60 as of the next legislature.
The legislative decree was presented on June 7 by the head of the Ministry of the Interior, Juan Carlos Bidegain, and was approved without analysis or parliamentary discussion.
Bidegain pointed out that “with this reform we are not only going to reduce the number of deputies, but we are leaving behind the waste system that violates the constitutional principle of equal voting.”
In the Central American country, the Hare formula was used, which consists of calculating an electoral quotient, dividing the votes cast in a certain circumscription among the seats that are disputed there, and assigning to the parties as many seats as times they reach said quotient with their votes.
If there are no seats to be assigned, the largest residuals of each party are used.
With the approved proposal, the D’Hondt system will be used from the 2024 elections, a method to distribute seats and councilors in proportion to the number of votes obtained by political parties.
Once the elections are held, the votes obtained by each party are ordered from highest to lowest and the candidacies that do not reach a minimum percentage of ballots are discarded.
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According to the Government, the initiative also “intends to reduce State spending, promote equal voting, implement the election by quotient and encourage decision-making in favor of the population.”
Analyst Eduardo Escobar, from the Acción Ciudadana organization, recently said that “the intention of reducing the number of deputies is that it responds to an electoral calculation, an electoral projection on the part of the official party and the president.”
He indicated that, in his judgment, this would seek to “generate the conditions for the Nuevas Ideas party to obtain or retain a majority in the Legislative Assembly.”
“In the case of the election of deputies, it would not only be accompanied by a reduction in deputies, but would also be accompanied by a change in the constituencies or a change in the electoral formula that would lead to the official party winning more than 80 % of the seats”, he stressed.
With the approval, the department of San Salvador will be represented by 16 deputies, Santa Ana, Sonsonate and San Miguel 5 representatives each, La Libertad 7, Usulután 4, Ahuachapán and La Paz 3, respectively.
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La Unión, Chalatenango, Morazán, San Vicente and Cabañas will have 2 deputies each.
El Salvador must hold the elections for the Presidency, Legislative Assembly, Mayors and Central American Parliament (Parlacen) in 2024.
