2021 Salvadoran political crisis
A political crisis in El Salvador occurred on 1 May 2021 when the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador voted to remove several judges from the Supreme Court and remove the Attorney General of El Salvador, both of which had been vocal opponents to the presidency of Nayib Bukele. The event has been referred to as a self-coup by the opposition and by news media outlets due to the action itself but also because of the 2020 Salvadoran political crisis in the year prior, where Bukele ordered soldiers into the Legislative Assembly, which has also been  characterized as a self-coup. Background. On 9 February 2020, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele ordered forty soldiers to enter the Legislative Assembly to pressure its deputies to vote in favor of requesting a $109 million dollar loan from the United States in order to support his Territorial Control Plan, a law enforcement measure against crime in El Salvador. He sat in the chair of Mario Ponce, the President of the Legislative Assembly, and after a few minutes, exited the Legislative Assembly and informed a crowd of supporters: "We're going to give these scoundrels a week and if they  haven't approved the plan by then, we convene them again," in reference to the politicians he needed to approve the loan request. Small protests against Bukele formed following the incident, known in El Salvador as 9-F, however, many more Salvadorans spoke out on social media in support of Bukele. Lawmakers and the political opposition condemned Bukele's action as an attempted coup d'état. The Supreme Court of El Salvador also condemned his action and prohibited him from calling the Legislative Assembly and prohibited the Ministry of Defense to carry out any actions not allowed by the Constitution. The  incident was cited as a case of democratic backsliding in El Salvador. During the COVID-19 pandemic in El Salvador, Bukele had ordered the National Civil Police to arrest people for violating lockdown orders. The Constitutional Court, a part of the Supreme Court, ruled that arresting citizens for violating lockdown orders was illegal, however, Bukele openly rejected and ignored the court ruling. On 8 November 2020, Raúl Melara, the Attorney General of El Salvador, opened investigations into twenty of Bukele's government institutions for corruption. Crisis. On 28 February 2021, the 2021 Salvadoran legislative election resulted in a victory for Nuevas  Ideas, Bukele's political party, which won 56 of the Legislative Assembly's 84 seats. The new session of the Legislative Assembly began on 1 May 2021. Ponce's term as President of the Legislative Assembly ended with the new session of the legislature, and the new session voted in Ernesto Castro as the new President of the Legislative Assembly with a margin of 64 votes in favor and 20 abstentions. Following the vote of Castro, the Legislative Assembly then voted to remove all five judges of the Supreme Court's Constitutional Court which had opposed Bukele in the past , citing that they had previously "issued arbitrary decisions." The vote ended with 64 in favor, 19 in opposition, and 1 abstention. Elisa Rosales, a leader of Nuevas Ideas, stated that there was "clear evidence" that the judges had impeded government conduct and that they had to be removed to protect the public. Immediately after the vote, the five judges ruled the vote unconstitutional, but the judges were removed anyway. The judges who were removed were , the President of the Supreme Court, Aldo Enrique Cáder, Carlos Sergio Avilés, Carlos Ernesto Sánchez, and Marina de Jesús Marenco. Later that same day, the  Legislative Assembly also voted to remove Melara as Attorney General, and he later presented his resignation. Five new judges were appointed on 3 May 2021, all of whom were supporters of Bukele. The new judges were Óscar Alberto López Jerez, who replaced Pineda Navas as President of the Supreme Court, Luis Javier Suárez Magaña, Héctor Nahúm García, José Ángel Pérez Chacón, and Elsy Dueñas Lovos, and they were each given armed guards as personal bodyguards. Aftermath and domestic reactions. The voting out of the judges and the Attorney General has been labeled as a coup, a self-coup, a powerplay , and a power grab by several news outlets and the political opposition of El Salvador as it gave Bukele and Nuevas Ideas increased political power. It has also been labeled as a "threat to democracy." Rene Portillo, a lawmaker of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), stated, "What happened last night in the Legislative Assembly, with a majority that the people gave them through the vote, is a coup." Many of Bukele's supporters and followers, the Armed Forces of El Salvador, and the National Civil Police supported the actions of the Legislative Assembly. Several human rights groups have condemned the  action and accused Bukele of allowing the political crisis to happen. Juan Pappier, the Senior Americas researcher of Human Rights Watch, stated that Bukele had "dismantle[d] all the internal checks and balances on his power." The José Simeón Cañas Central American University (UCA) stated: "In this dark hour for our already weak democracy, the UCA calls for the defense of what was built after the war at the cost of so much effort and so many lives: a society where saying 'no' to power is not a fantasy."