Trevor Munroe | An El Salvador in Jamaica – Not ‘by any stretch of the imagination’

Less than two months ago, the Jamaica Information Service quoted our prime minister, a former student of our Faculty of Social Sciences, Mona, as follows, “I do my research [of SOEs] ...and I see the president of El Salvador gets ten straight extensions of their state of emergency, moving their murder rate from as high as 100 per 100,000 to seven per 100,000... so as I reflect on Jamaica, in El Salvador 60,000 persons have been arrested...” Our prime minister went on to say he is not proposing “by any stretch of the imagination that we should contemplate that course of action” [Transformation to Republic will be pursued with haste - PM ( https://jis.gov.jm/transformation-to-republic-will-be-pursued-with-haste...)

Two days before, speaking at the national security seminar under the theme ‘Defending and Securing Jamaica’s development: A Strategic Security Analysis’, The Gleaner quoted Prime Minister Andrew Holness as pointing “to the success achieved in crime fighting in El Salvador as what can be achieved in curbing gang violence, if the right approach is used.” Our prime minister is quoted further as saying “they recognise they had a problem [and] their Executive acted …if we do not act, and act decisively, our gangs will be emboldened and they will intensify their threats”.

A month before, during a media briefing on December 6, 2022, in announcing a state of emergency in the parishes of Clarendon, St Catherine, St James, Westmoreland, Hanover and sections of Kingston and St Andrew and St Ann, the prime minister explained that other countries such as El Salvador and Nicaragua have ongoing states of emergency to assist in crime-fighting efforts. He went on to say that SOEs will not be used “forever… but in the modern world our Constitution needs to be upgraded so that those powers can be easily and effectively used when the circumstances require them”.

HOMICIDE RATE

I, along with all Jamaicans, yearn for the day when our homicide rate can be as dramatically reduced as has happened in El Salvador, under the presidency of Nayib Bukele, in the three plus years since his accession to office on June 1, 2019. However, like our prime minister “by no stretch of the imagination” would I and Jamaicans who cherish our democracy “contemplate” Bukele’s course of action. How come!? My research, presumably along with the prime minister’s, reveals the following:

1. Under the state of exception (or emergency) imposed on March 27, 2022, in less than one year, 64,000 arrests have been made. As of January 2023, El Salvador has the highest prisoner rate worldwide, with 605 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population. Jamaica stands at approximately 129 per 100,000 (up to July 2022).

2. Under the state of exception, arrests can be made without a warrant and detainees do not have the right to a lawyer. Families do not get access to imprisoned relatives, and the whereabouts of detainees are concealed, constituting enforced disappearance.

3. Children are also held, as the age of criminal responsibility was reduced from 16 to 12 years; 12 to 16 year olds can get up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

4. Within the first year of his accession to office, Bukele faced resistance from the legislative assembly/parliament in relation to the assembly approving a loan request to the United States for US$109 million to upgrade security equipment for the armed forces. On the night of February 9, 2020, Bukele sent the military into the Parliament to coerce the legislature’s agreement. This action was condemned by the United States’ Department of State as “unacceptable and violates the separation of powers of the democratic institutions of El Salvador”, on February 12. Foreign governments, the political opposition, and human rights organisations equally condemned this affront to democracy.

5. A year later, in May 2021, President Bukele moved to fire the attorney general and five Supreme Court judges in what the United States and the Organisation of American States (OAS) characterised as “democratic backsliding”.

6. Soon thereafter, in September, the Supreme Court reversed a previous ruling from 2014 – in relation to El Salvador’s Constitution – that a sitting president cannot run for immediate re-election. A few days ago, President Bukele announced that he shall be running for re-election in the presidential elections due on the February 4, 2024.

7. Within El Salvador itself, 71 civil society organisations condemned the move to fire the attorney general and the judges; and 26 of these regarded this action as in breach of the constitutional order, and as a threat to the rights of Salvadorians. Several bodies, including the Due Process of Law Foundation and the Ibero-American Institute of Constitutional Law, described the president’s political party as an “unquestionable authoritarian political project, in which all powers respond to a single person”.

8. Trade unions marched against the Bukele administration, demanding an end to the state of exception, under which a large number of organised workers were unjustly arrested and detained without warrant. One union leader died in custody.

9 . There were 421 press freedom violations between 2019 and 2021, including physical attacks, digital harassment, restrictions on journalists’ work and on access to public information. In the 2022 Press Freedom Index, El Salvador had a global score of 54 and a ranking of 112 out of 180 countries. In stark contrast, Jamaica’s score was 83 and our ranking was 12 out of 180.

10. President Bukele has announced his intention to double the size of the military and to make military service mandatory. Currently, El Salvador has approximately 21,000 active military personnel, approximately 336 per 100,000 population. Implementation of this intention would move the military to over 600 per 100,000 population. In comparison, Jamaica’s military is estimated at 280 per 100,000.

BETTER APPRECIATE

Arising from this research, we may now better appreciate the prime minister’s declaration that by no “stretch of the imagination” should we contemplate Bukele’s course of action. Beyond appreciation, however, we should be vigilant to discern and oppose elements of such executive authoritarianism eroding and undermining our democratic institutions.

However, there is a really difficult issue here. What if a Bukele-style course of action is popular among the Jamaican people? Bukele himself, in the most recent polls, has an average 90 per cent support of the Salvadorian electorate. Between January 1 and February 26, only 23 murders were recorded in El Salvador, an 84.7 per cent decrease when compared to the same period in 2022, which saw 150 murders. Is there a way that we can achieve Bukele’s record reduction in murder and improved citizen security without infringing our rights “other than is demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”?

Or, are some of us now prepared to sacrifice the independence of our courts, the freedom to speak on our 24/7 talk shows, our access to information, our Office of the Public Defender, our right to due process and risk our freedom of association – in trade unions, for entertainment, etc. – in order to live in greater peace? We need to face these difficult questions especially as our authorities grapple with how to reduce the murder rate and our Constitutional Reform Committee contemplates going beyond a republic to modifying our Charter of Rights as well as strengthening executive power.

- Professor Emeritus Trevor Munroe is director of National Integrity Action. Send feedback to info@niajamaica.org or columns@gleanerjm.com.