[{"bbox": [96, 153, 1134, 241], "category": "Text", "text": "The Action constitutes an opportunity for the EU to follow up on EU EOM recommendations and engage with the relevant and credible national partners to contribute to the efforts aimed at strengthening transparency, accountability, and respect for human rights and rule of law."}, {"bbox": [85, 271, 340, 302], "category": "Section-header", "text": "## 2.2 Problem Analysis"}, {"bbox": [96, 317, 1134, 478], "category": "Text", "text": "After the 1992 peace accords in 1992, two traditional parties dominated El Salvador's political landscape; the right-wing ARENA party ruled for 20 years and then the left-wing FMLN party ruled for 10 years. Although other small parties had seats in the Legislative Assembly, these two traditional big parties had the majority of the population's support. However, in 2019 and 2021 drastic changes took place with a new political party under the leadership of Mr. Nayib Bukele, winning the presidential and legislative elections with a wide difference from other parties, changing the traditional political party system."}, {"bbox": [96, 489, 1133, 544], "category": "Text", "text": "This transformation appears to be weakening the checks, balances between institutions, and has raised concerns for the respect of human rights⁷."}, {"bbox": [96, 554, 1134, 741], "category": "Text", "text": "Studies have reported that Salvadorans lost confidence in traditional political parties mainly due to an endemic corruption and plutocracy⁸. This disenchantment was observed in the most recent electoral results, when traditional parties went from holding 75% of seats in 2015, to 63% in 2018 and to 21% in 2021. The current governing party, “Nuevas Ideas” now holds 54% of the legislative seats. Additionally, since the beginning of his term, Mr. Bukele’s administration and party’s legislators have maintained a very high popularity rating. That said, most of the recently elected legislators are young, have little experience in public administration, and limited political experience or expertise."}, {"bbox": [96, 752, 1134, 860], "category": "Text", "text": "The first two years of Bukele's mandate were characterized by disagreements between the Executive and the Legislative Assembly, in which his party had no representation. However, since the 2021 Legislative elections “Nuevas Ideas” is able to make majority decisions without taking into account the opposition parties, and the level of legislative dialogue has decreased significantly."}, {"bbox": [96, 871, 1134, 1413], "category": "Text", "text": "The recommendations of the EU-EOMs in 2018 and 2019, and of the follow-up EU EOM in 2021 recommendations focused on strengthening electoral processes as a fundamental element to strengthen good governance and democracy. Some progress has been made in the implementation of the EU EOM recommendations, for example in the processes of counting, transmission and dissemination of results by strengthening the training of electoral staff and the incorporation of electoral technologies. Some recommendations were partially implemented through the adoption of effective measures for the political participation of women and LGBTI candidates, the disassociation of electoral personnel from partisan influence, the beginning of a debate on the structure and composition of the TSE, as well as the possibility of that independent candidates present their candidacy for the municipal elections. The EU EOM has maintained the recommendations considered as priorities by previous EU EOMs such as: i) the need to improve the supervision of political financing, ii) the depolitization of electoral personnel iii) strengthening of legislation on electoral campaigns and the media, and iv) electoral participation and representation of all citizens in electoral processes, including women, indigenous people, people with disabilities and LGBTI persons. With regard to the recommendations on the media, there has been a setback in some aspects of freedom of expression and the press, as well as an increase in hate speech and disinformation. This lead to the deterioration of the working conditions of independent journalists, the harassment and smear campaigns against independent media outlets and investigative journalists, the limitation of access to information, and the suppression of state advertising in the private media. The TSE expressed its intention to create a disinformation control unit that could form part of its broader function of controlling electoral campaign infractions. However, until now this plan has not materialized. In the absence of state mechanisms to present"}, {"bbox": [85, 1500, 1143, 1548], "category": "Footnote", "text": "⁷ See for example the index of Freedom House from 2018 to 2021 https://freedomhouse.org/country/el-salvador/freedom-world/2021"}, {"bbox": [85, 1548, 1143, 1647], "category": "Footnote", "text": "⁸ According to the Latinobarómetro study, by 2018 El Salvador along with Guatemala had the lowest percentage of support for democracy in Latin America (28%); in the case of political parties only 5% of the citizenry expressed confidence in them; and, in relation to Congress, El Salvador was the country with the second lowest confidence index for this institution with 10%. (https://www.latinobarometro.org/latContents.jsp)"}, {"bbox": [1038, 1655, 1143, 1679], "category": "Page-footer", "text": "Page 6 of 19"}]