With 67 votes in favor, the Legislative Assembly approved Tuesday night the initiative of the Council of Ministers to extend the emergency regime for another 30 days and be able to continue fighting gangs.
The head of the Nuevas Ideas faction, Christian Guevara, introduced the initiative to the plenary session with a modification of the agenda itself, which he asked to be approved with a waiver of paperwork.
The last extension given by Congress to the emergency regime expires at midnight next Sunday when its 30 days expire, so with the extension it comes into force again as of Monday.
Deputy Caleb Navarro stressed that “this government will go down in history as the only one that had the courage to confront the gangs. Outside, it is said that President Nayib Bukele has been the only president who has governed and fought the maras.
On the other hand, he lamented that FMLN deputies are introducing initiatives in the Assembly to “compensate gang members.”
“While the new Assembly and President Nayib Bukele are fighting this War Against Gangs,” Navarro said, “the irresponsible FMLN is launching initiatives to compensate gang members.”
The initiative was delivered today by the Security Cabinet to the president of the Salvadoran Congress, Ernesto Castro.
The Cabinet representatives who presented it were: the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Gustavo Villatoro; the Minister of Defense, René Francis Merino Monroy and the Director General of the National Civil Police (PNC), Mauricio Arriaza Chicas.
With the entry into force of the current extension of the exceptional regime, which began on June 25, the Security Cabinet proposes to prolong for another 30 days the strategy that has allowed the average number of crimes and the number of gang members on the streets to continue to shrink.
Until last July 18, the authorities registered 46,694 arrests during the emergency regime and a total of 58 days with zero homicides, of which 10 belonged to the month of July.