Nuevas Ideas (; abbreviated N or NI) is the current ruling political party of El Salvador. The party was founded on 25 October 2017 by Nayib Bukele, the then-mayor of San Salvador, and was registered by the Supreme Electoral Court on 21 August 2018. The party's current president is Xavier Zablah Bukele, a cousin of Bukele who has served since March 2020. Since the 2024 legislative election, it has been the dominant party in the country, having nearly unanimous control of the Legislative Assembly and the vast majority of the Municipalities and the Central American Parliament.
Although Nuevas Ideas was formed before the 2019 presidential election, it was not legally registered as a political party in time to run a candidate. As such, Bukele ran for president as a member of the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA), but he continued to use Nuevas Ideas branding throughout his campaign. He won the election with 53 percent of the vote and assumed office on 1 June 2019, becoming the first president in 30 years to not be a member of the country's two largest political parties: the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) or the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). During the 2021 legislative election, Nuevas Ideas won a supermajority in the Legislative Assembly, winning 56 of 84 seats. The party also won 152 of the country's 262 municipalities and 14 of the country's 20 seats in the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN).
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Bukele announced that he was running for re-election, which was considered unconstitutional by legal experts and diplomatic officials, and Nuevas Ideas leadership stated that the party aimed to win all 60 seats in the Legislative Assembly. In October 2022, the Nuevas Ideas-led Legislative Assembly passed a law to allow Salvadoran expatriates to vote in the election. In June 2023, it passed two proposals made by Bukele to reduce the number of legislative seats from 84 to 60 as well as reduce the number of municipalities from 262 to 44; both actions were described as a consolidation of power. Bukele won re-election by a landslide margin, winning 84.65 percent of the vote. Nuevas Ideas won another supermajority in the Legislative Assembly, winning 54 of 60 seats.
Nuevas Ideas is a big tent political party, rejecting both left-wing and right-wing labels, and Bukele portrays the party as a Third Way. Meanwhile, Bukele himself has been described as a conservative and has been supported by conservatives abroad. As of 2019, the party has 507,633 members.
History
Establishment
On 10 October 2017, Nayib Bukele, the then-mayor of San Salvador, was expelled from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) by its ethics tribunal after he was accused of violating the party's principles and verbally attacking party official Xóchitl Marchelli. Five days after he was expelled from the party, Bukele expressed his intention to run for president in the upcoming 2019 presidential election as a member of a new political movement. On 25 October 2017, Bukele announced the establishment of a new political party, (Spanish for "New Ideas"), on social media such as Facebook and YouTube. Bukele stated that the party sought to remove the established political parties—particularly the FMLN and the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA)—from their established power.
Bukele claimed that the political system would seek to hinder his presidential candidacy. Fernando Argíello Téllez, a magistrate of the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), believed that it could be viable that the party would be registered in time for the 2019 presidential election, adding that it "does not have any restriction at this moment" ("). Regardless, the TSE asked the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice if Bukele being expelled from the FMLN, rather than resigning or legally changing political affiliation, would make him a defector and disqualify him from running for public office.
By legal requirement, Nuevas Ideas had to collect 50,000 signatures to be legally registered as a political party by the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE). On 8 May 2018, Nuevas Ideas collected 200,000 signatures within a span of three days and turned in 2,000 books of signatures to the TSE. The TSE accepted 176,076 signatures as valid in late-June 2018, but the party was not legally registered until 21 August 2018. As Bukele believed that the party would not be registered in time for the presidential election, he decided to run for president as a member of Democratic Change (CD), but the TSE disqualified the party as it failed to earn more than 50,000 votes in the 2015 legislative and municipal elections. Bukele then sought to run for president as a member of the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA), winning the party's presidential nomination on 29 July 2018.
Although Bukele officially ran for president as a member of GANA, he continued to use Nuevas Ideas branding throughout his campaign. Opinion polling gave Bukele consistent leads against the ARENA and FMLN presidential candidates, with several giving him over 50 percent support. Bukele ultimately won the 2019 election with 53.10 percent of the vote, foregoing the need for a second round. He was inaugurated on 1 June 2019, becoming the first president since José Napoleón Duarte of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) left office in 1989 to not be a member of either ARENA or the FMLN.
2021 legislative election
Although Bukele was the country's president, he did not control the Legislative Assembly. The legislature was still controlled by the political opposition, while GANA held 11 seats and Nuevas Ideas held zero seats. In an attempt to secure a US$109 million loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE) for his security policies, Bukele called for an extraordinary legislative session and sent 40 soldiers into the Legislative Assembly in what was described by the opposition as an "attempted coup".
On 19 July 2020, Nuevas Ideas held its primary elections to determine the party's candidates for the upcoming 2021 legislative election, the first election in which the party participated. Candidates for the Legislative Assembly, the country's 262 municipalities, and the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) were elected via electronic voting. During the primaries, 150 complaints of fraud were issued alleging that some candidates had purchased chips to register more than one vote. Douglas Rodríguez, the secretary of the party's National Electoral Commission (CNE), confirmed that some candidates had bought chips and validated them. The CNE confirmed that it would seek the identities of candidates involved in buying chips and would hand over cases with sufficient evidence to the party's ethics commission.
In September 2020, the El Faro digital newspaper alleged that Bukele had entered into secret negotiations with Mara Salvatrucha and the 18th Street gang, two of the country's largest criminal gangs, to reduce the country's murder rate and vote for Nuevas Ideas in the 2021 election in exchange for repealing anti-gang laws and relaxing security in prisons. Bukele denied the allegations, saying on Twitter "they accuse us of violating the terrorists' [the gang members'] human rights. Now they say we give them privileges? Show me a privilege. Only one" ("), posting images of gang members in cramped conditions during an April 2020 prison crackdown. Some media outlets and Salvadoran voters alleged that, during election day, gang members were present outside of voting stations telling voters to "vote for the N".
Throughout the 2021 election campaign, various opinion polls gave Nuevas Ideas significant leads over the other political parties, with some polls giving the party well over 60 percent support. Nuevas Ideas formed an electoral coalition with GANA during the 2021 election, and both parties won a combined two-thirds of all votes cast in the election. In total, Nuevas Ideas won 56 seats in the Legislative Assembly, 152 municipalities, and 14 seats in PARLACEN.
XIII Legislature
The 13th session of the Legislative Assembly began on 1 May 2021. Nuevas Ideas, already holding a majority in the legislature, formed a government with GANA, the Christian Democratic Party, and the National Coalition Party (PCN). The government held 64 seats in the Legislative Assembly, which some described as a supermajority. Ernesto Castro was elected by Nuevas Ideas and its allies as the president of the Legislative Assembly, with the remaining 20 deputies abstaining. Christian Guevara served as the party's leader in the Legislative Assembly.
On the same day the 13th legislative session began, the Nuevas Ideas-led government voted to remove five members of the Supreme Court of Justice's Constitutional Chamber on the basis that the judges had previously issued "arbitrary" decisions. The Legislative Assembly then voted to remove Attorney General Raúl Melara. The judges and attorney general were replaced by supporters of Bukele the following day. The event was described by opposition politicians as a coup, a self-coup, and a power grab.
In June 2021, the Legislative Assembly passed a law to make bitcoin legal tender; the law went into effect on 7 September 2021. In October 2021, Bukele and Nuevas Ideas accused two of its deputies in the Legislative Assembly of negotiating with the United States embassy in San Salvador to fracture Nuevas Ideas and oppose Bukele's political agenda. The embassy and both deputies denied the allegations, but both deputies were expelled from the party regardless. On 27 March 2022, following a significant spike in homicides in the prior three days, the Legislative Assembly voted to declare a state of exception for thirty days. The state of exception, which has led to a large-scale gang crackdown, has since been extended seventeen times and has resulted in over 73,800 arrests and up to 152 deaths in custody as of . In October 2022, the Nuevas Ideas-led Legislative Assembly passed the Special Law for the Exercise of Suffrage Abroad which allowed Salvadorans living outside of the country to vote in the 2024 elections for the presidency and the Legislative Assembly.
In December 2022, Bukele tweeted that he believed that the country's 262 municipalities should be reduced to 50. In February 2023, Castro not only confirmed that Nuevas Ideas was formally investigating municipal consolidation but also that they were looking into reducing the seats in the Legislative Assembly from 84 to 64. On 7 June 2023, the Nuevas Ideas-led Legislative Assembly approved a proposal submitted by Bukele to reduce the number of seats in the Legislative Assembly from 84 to 60. Opposition figures claimed that the reduction was an attempt to consolidate power for Nuevas Ideas in the legislature and diminish the political participation of smaller political parties. On 13 June 2023, the Legislative Assembly approved a proposal submitted by Bukele to reduce the number of municipalities from 262 to 44. Deputies of Nuevas Ideas argued that the reductions would "generate a more equitable distribution of wealth", improve the quality of life for people in each municipality, and save the government US$250 million per year. Meanwhile, opposition figures have described the reductions as a power grab, a concentration of power, and an attempt by Nuevas Ideas to give itself an electoral advantage.