In an 11 question interview, Salvadoran Vice President Made 21 Deceptive Statements

Article at Revista Factum published on 22 March 2024 https://www.revistafactum.com/verificacion-ulloa-dem/

On Thursday, March 21, Diario El Mundo published an interview with the Republic’s vice president-elect, Félix Ulloa. This was the first interview he granted to a non-government-aligned media outlet in El Salvador in several months and the first since the 2024 elections.

Factum cross-checked Ulloa’s statements against official data, journalistic reports, international assessments, Constitutional Court rulings, and the Salvadoran Constitution itself. This analysis revealed that, in an interview with only 11 questions, the vice president-elect made 21 statements that contradict reality, divided into four categories: Constitution and legality, the 2024 elections, social policies, and the economy.

Of these statements, 11 were misleading, one was contradictory, and nine were outright false.

Constitution, Legality, and the Rule of Law

Much of the interview focused on immediate presidential reelection and the constitutional reform proposals spearheaded by Ulloa. This was also the area where he most frequently distorted reality—eight times, to be precise.

“Let’s remember that, as it stands today, the Constitution of 1983 allows for a second term; it doesn’t mention reelection,” —Ulloa in an interview with Diario El Mundo.

Ulloa is outright lying. The current 1983 Constitution does not permit reelection or a second term. On the contrary, it explicitly prohibits immediate reelection, making his statement false. The Constitution even mandates insurrection if such reelection occurs (Article 88), imposes sanctions on those who promote it (Article 75), and directs the Assembly to remove any president who exceeds their term (Article 131), which is set at five years with no possibility of extension (Article 154).

A legal analysis by two constitutional law experts from Cristosal confirms that the Constitution’s intent was to prevent reelection to avoid abuses of power, explicitly rejecting past authoritarian regimes.

The ruling issued on September 3, 2021, by the Constitutional Chamber—whose judges were forcibly appointed on May 1 by Nuevas Ideas—was merely an interpretation of Article 152 that contradicts the broader constitutional principle of power alternation, a principle so essential to the system of government that it cannot be amended.

“So, if President Bukele wanted to run for a third term in 2029, the rule that enabled him now would prevent it because it would say, ‘You have already been president in the previous term.’ So yes, a constitutional reform would be necessary for a third term or, as seen in other countries, indefinite reelection, which legislators and mayors already have. The mayor of Antiguo Cuscatlán has been in office for 36 years and is running for another term, and there are deputies who have been reelected because there is no limit on municipal or legislative reelection—only for the presidency, which the 1983 Constitution allows for a second term,” —Ulloa in an interview with Diario El Mundo.

Ulloa again lies outright when he claims that a constitutional reform could enable Bukele to seek a third term. This is false. Article 248 of the Constitution outlines the requirements for amendments and explicitly states that certain provisions cannot be modified. Specifically, it protects articles defining national territory (Article 84), the form of government (Articles 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 152, 154), and those concerning power alternation. Even if the Legislative Assembly unanimously agreed, it cannot reform the Constitution to allow reelection.

Additionally, Ulloa makes a misleading and out-of-context comparison to indefinite reelection. The Constitution establishes that citizens operate under the principle of freedom—they may do anything not expressly prohibited (Article 8). Public officials, however, are bound by the principle of legality (Article 86), meaning they can only do what is explicitly permitted. The Constitution explicitly allows legislative and municipal reelection but does not allow presidential reelection—in fact, it prohibits it multiple times.

Is there no restriction preventing such a reform?
“No. The people are sovereign. When you convene the constituent power, that power belongs to the people, who govern themselves democratically, as stated in Article 83 of the Constitution. If this constituent power is convened through two legislative sessions and follows due process, there is no issue,” —Ulloa in an interview with Diario El Mundo.

Ulloa claims there is no restriction on reforming the Constitution regarding a third term or indefinite reelection, arguing that the people’s sovereignty, expressed through elected legislators, allows for such changes. This is misleading. The sovereign power of the people, as expressed in constitutional reform, has a limit: the principle of power alternation cannot be amended (Article 248).

What about Article 248 of the Constitution, which states that power alternation cannot be reformed?
“That’s the question—how do we define alternation? Because, for example, alternation was never at risk, since the people ultimately decided whether to elect the president,” —Ulloa in an interview with Diario El Mundo.

This statement is misleading because Ulloa equates alternation with merely holding elections, even if the incumbent candidate remains the same. The Constitution, in six different articles, establishes that the presidency must change hands to prevent power concentration. Violating this principle justifies insurrection (Article 88), which the Constitution explicitly allows (Article 87) to “restore constitutional order when it is disrupted by violations of the government system or severe breaches of constitutional rights.”

“The rule simply allows him to register as a candidate. Once he does, the electoral authority registers him, and he competes under equal conditions with other candidates,” —Ulloa in an interview with Diario El Mundo.

Ulloa falsely claims that by taking a six-month leave, Bukele competes on equal footing with his opponents. This is false both in theory and in practice. Besides the constitutional prohibition, Bukele pursued reelection under unequal conditions, using state resources to bolster his image, a direct violation of the Constitution (Article 218) and the 2014 ruling by the Constitutional Chamber, which prohibits leveraging public office for electoral advantage.

Furthermore, the decree granting Bukele and Ulloa leave allowed them to retain privileges such as presidential security, official residences, and state transportation—advantages their opponents did not have.

“Alternation is meant to prevent situations like those in past dictatorships—such as General Martínez’s regime, the last time we had an autocratic government. But here, if a reform allows continuity, it will be solely the people's decision,” —Ulloa in an interview with Diario El Mundo.

Ulloa tries to distance the current situation from the dictatorship of General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, but a similar process is unfolding in El Salvador. There is no guarantee that Bukele’s reelection will be the last. The official stance on power retention has repeatedly changed—initially, Bukele stated that immediate reelection was impossible, then he installed judges who authorized it, then he denied seeking indefinite reelection, and now his vice president is floating the idea. Therefore, Ulloa’s statement is contradictory.

Is there enough time to pass a constitutional reform?
“This is precisely the right time. The current legislature ends on April 30, so we would need to approve the reform with a simple majority now, allowing the newly elected legislature to ratify it after May 1,” —Ulloa in an interview with Diario El Mundo.

Ulloa claims that the legislature could pass a reform before May 1 and have the newly elected Assembly ratify it. This is false. The Constitutional Chamber, in case 33-2015, ruled that constitutional reforms cannot be approved during the transition period, as voters did not elect legislators with knowledge of such reforms. Reforming the Constitution before May would not only be procedurally flawed but also an act of deception against the electorate.

2024 Elections

Regarding the recent elections, Félix Ulloa also offers assessments that clash with reality. The first revolves around the supposed success of the general elections held in February and March of this year.

The elections are over, what is your evaluation of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal? "This Tribunal was tasked with an extraordinary, unprecedented task, and I think it should be congratulated because they saw it through to a successful conclusion," Ulloa said in an interview with DEM.

This statement is false and seems to ignore what was reported by observation missions and media outlets, which highlighted numerous irregularities during the elections.

In addition to an unconstitutional candidacy, there was the use of public resources for campaigning, as noted by the Observa El Salvador consortium. The political debt to the opposition was also withheld, and there were logistical irregularities concerning the elections, such as the failure of the data processing and transmission system, doubts about the chain of custody of the election packages, mishandling of credentials for the final count, and the impediment of effective monitoring by opposition parties, the press, and international observers during the final count. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal itself hired members of Nuevas Ideas to count the votes.

"I could see it from the United States, from Canada; they were voting, and it was done well, there were no alarms or complaints, I think it was done transparently and safely," Ulloa said in the interview with DEM.

Salvadoran outlet Focos reported on how training for overseas voting monitors was co-opted by Nuevas Ideas. Moreover, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal has reserved audits of the overseas vote, so there is no evidence that electronic voting, whether in-person or online, was conducted transparently and securely. Therefore, the statement by the vice president in leave is false.

"I think this Tribunal had the difficult task of dealing with an army of militants from the two parties that had lost both the presidential and legislative elections, and somehow, they tried to make the Tribunal's job difficult or tarnish the victory of the already-known winner, President Bukele," Ulloa said in the interview with DEM.

Ulloa speaks of partisan militants who allegedly tried to hinder the elections. This is false, as in both election days, the members of the parties who interfered with and hindered the Electoral Tribunal's work were almost exclusively from Nuevas Ideas. These same individuals blocked the monitoring of observers, the press, and opposition parties at different stages, particularly during the final legislative count. Focos also documented how legislative employees counted votes outside the law in Antiguo Cuscatlán.

"I think the situation turned out the other way around. The fact that the results couldn't be officially transmitted through the protocols allowed the people to see the vote-by-vote count. This had never been done before because they usually just count the protocols; the ballot boxes are opened only in very exceptional cases. It was an act of transparency," Ulloa said in the interview with DEM.

This is false, as throughout the final scrutiny process and the vote-by-vote count, there was evidence of irregularities, such as accepting votes that were clearly invalid or marked irregularly. Additionally, Revista Factum documented how a Nuevas Ideas member attempted to manipulate the data entry. The Organization of American States also issued a report stating that the elections lacked "better organization, more transparency, and above all, more equity."

Health, Education, and Security

Félix Ulloa did not only talk about politics in his interview. He also touched on social policies, particularly in health and education. And, as with politics, in these areas, he offered misleading, false, or inaccurate versions.

"The COVID-19 crisis allowed us to position ourselves and save a health and hospital system that was in precarious conditions," Ulloa said in the interview with DEM.

A report from La Prensa Gráfica revealed that there were 15,956 COVID-19 related deaths in El Salvador from March 2020 to January 2023, but the Ministry of Health only recognizes 4,299 deaths in the country due to the pandemic. This means that only 26% of the deaths are acknowledged. This underreporting shows that Ulloa's statement is false.

"Then comes the issue of security. When you have those factors, a secure population, a healthy population, an educated population, what is left is to promote economic development," Ulloa said in the interview with DEM.

Beyond the pandemic, there have been significant shortcomings in health. Recently, the Union of Doctors and Workers of the Social Security Institute (SIMETRISS) reported that there is an order for general surgeons to perform specialized surgeries. Health sector workers have reported unpaid night shifts, and according to Gato Encerrado, over a million people stopped receiving outpatient therapies and other treatments. During this period, the construction of Rosales Hospital was also not completed. Therefore, this statement by the vice president in leave is misleading.

"And we also accomplished the other great task that was pending, the issue of education; over a million computers were distributed to all students," Ulloa said in the interview with DEM.

Beyond the distribution of computers, the words of Nayib Bukele's running mate are misleading, as there is still a deficit in the remodeling and reconstruction of schools, including more than 70 affected by Tropical Storm Julia in October 2022. There were delays in delivering school budgets, and the University of El Salvador is owed tens of millions of dollars.

"The idea is to insert our population and future generations into the digital era. The president always believed that El Salvador would be at the forefront of the Fourth Industrial Revolution," Ulloa said in the interview with DEM.

This is misleading, as PISA tests, which measure the state of education worldwide, ranked El Salvador 78th out of 81 countries, with poor results in science and mathematics, subjects essential for integration into technological industries.

Moreover, PISA reports that 18% of students aged 15 to 16 said they skipped at least one meal a week because there was no money at home, and 3% had to skip 2 or 3 meals a week. According to PISA, only students from Guatemala, Indonesia, Morocco, and Cambodia face greater deprivation than Salvadorans. These are significant barriers to the supposed "Fourth Industrial Revolution."

"However, perhaps the most relevant was this war against gangs and returning security to the communities, which affected not only people's daily lives but also economic development," Ulloa said in the interview with DEM.

Regarding security, the elected vice president talks about the most publicized measure of the Bukele administration: the alleged war against gangs and the results of the state of emergency, which will mark two years on March 27. But his words are misleading and incomplete, as they overlook that his government was not always in "open war." In fact, during the first half of Bukele's administration, there were negotiations with gangs that included the release of gang leaders, something recognized by a current official.

On the other hand, although there have been fewer homicides, there are thousands of reports of arbitrary arrests and at least 200 deaths in prison centers, many of them with signs of torture. Additionally, two years into the supposed war, there are still signs of agreements with gangs, such as the fact that a man suspected of being a gang member was a candidate for Nuevas Ideas in Cuscatlán or that the government attempted to conspire with a gang leader and was willing to offer more than a million dollars to bring the leader Elmer Canales Rivera "Crook" back to El Salvador.

Economy, Bitcoin, and Cost of Living

The economy seems to be the Achilles' heel of the Bukele administration. Consequently, the speech of the second-in-command of the Presidential House on this matter also contains half-truths and misleading positions. The first revolves around Bitcoin, the apparent main bet of the administration after security.

"The bet on the digital economy, not only was the Bitcoin Law approved in September 2021, which positioned us at the forefront of cryptocurrencies," Ulloa said in the interview with DEM.

While it is true that the law was approved (although not in September, but in June 2021), it is not true that El Salvador is at the forefront of cryptocurrencies; this is a misleading statement. According to a 2022 survey by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, only 14% of surveyed companies had made transactions using Bitcoin. The survey also revealed that 90% of respondents said that the economic measure promoted by the government had little or no impact on sales. A Factum report also showed that even in government offices, payments with cryptocurrency cannot be made.

"And the critics, who have now fallen silent, said that El Salvador was losing money when Bitcoin dropped to $15,000 and we had bought it at a higher price. Now they have nothing to say because it has risen enormously thanks to the fact that the United States approved it, the Treasury approved it in December of last year," Ulloa said in the interview with DEM.

Despite Bitcoin's rise, which reached its historic peak in March 2024, the Salvadoran government remains in the red, as it has not only made supposed purchases of the cryptocurrency. It also spent hundreds of millions of dollars to implement a currency with little use among the population. This included the $30 bond that many people could not claim because their identity was stolen, as well as the installation of Chivo ATMs. The triumphalism behind this response is misleading.

A Focos publication showed that the government allocated more than $200 million from a loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, intended to help small businesses survive the pandemic, for Bitcoin implementation.

Recently, Nayib Bukele announced that more than 5,689 bitcoins, worth over $406 million, were transferred to a "cold wallet," i.e., a physical device to store cryptocurrencies offline. As of Friday, March 22, at the current exchange rate, this reserve has dropped to $363.3 million, a loss of at least $42 million.

Bitcoin exchange rate on March 22, 2024.

When will this economic takeoff impact the cost of living and employment? "Employment, of course, with all these companies, there will be more formal job opportunities, especially for youth and people with technological skills," Ulloa said in the interview with DEM.

Regarding job creation, Ulloa seems optimistic about new opportunities for youth and people with technological skills, but his position is not grounded in reality and is misleading. This is because the creation of formal jobs in technological sectors requires qualified personnel, and the PISA tests show that Salvadoran children and youth have significant deficiencies in mathematics and science, subjects crucial for these fields.

"The cost of living is a matter that does not depend exclusively on El Salvador, it depends on international factors. We have seen how the war in Ukraine raised fertilizer and agricultural product prices because Ukraine's granaries could not close their products due to the war. Then the war in the Middle East. What El Salvador did, and this is the president Bukele's very wise vision, was to try to cushion it with a series of anti-inflation measures, tariffs were lowered on essential products, zero tariffs were put on gasoline, and a limit was set on fuel prices, saying 'fuel prices will not rise'; and the state began to forgo certain revenues coming from these increases," Ulloa said in the interview with DEM.

Finally, regarding the cost of living, the vice president in leave is correct that it is influenced by both local and international factors. However, his triumphalism regarding the measures taken is misleading.

According to El Diario de Hoy, El Salvador has the highest food price increase in Central America, and between November and December of 2023, food prices increased by more than 3.98%. This means that the measures taken by the government seem to be insufficient or have a lesser impact compared to neighboring countries that, not being dollarized, are more vulnerable to inflation than El Salvador.

Economist Tatiana Marroquín explained to Factum that the measures Ulloa refers to did not prevent the price hikes and that prices fell when international inflation dropped. "So it wasn't effective, because they tried to control the rise in prices, and that's difficult without monetary policy. What you do is alleviate the impact on people's wallets, and you don't do that by removing tariffs," added the economist.

Marroquín also said that institutions like the International Monetary Fund or ECLAC recommended measures such as supporting the most vulnerable households with transfers or removing taxes on the basic food basket, but El Salvador took another path: "They took general inflation control measures, without targeting them, and more focused on behavior because they think prices rise because people are bad and charge too high."

History of Misinformation

This is not the first time Ulloa has flirted with inaccurate data. On numerous occasions, he has been the envoy of the Presidential House trying to soften the media or international impact of decisions.

He has previously attempted to mask re-election as a "second term" and even claimed there were hidden articles in the Constitution allowing it. According to Gato Encerrado, by August 30, 2023, he had offered five different versions regarding this. He has also made controversial statements, such as calling traitors those who questioned the state of emergency. During his first five years as vice president, his commitment to the fluid narrative that Casa Presidencial seeks to impose has necessarily meant departing from the truth on several occasions.