El Salvador: US denies involvement in alleged conspiracy

SAN SALVADOR (AP) – The United States embassy in El Salvador on Sunday denied links it to an alleged plot to disband the parliamentary group of President Nayib Bukele’s New Ideas party.

“We categorically deny the allegations made in a recording recently published on the Nuevas Ideas Twitter account. The people speaking in the audio are not representatives of the US Embassy,” the US embassy tweeted on its official account.

The head of the Cian Caucus, the parliamentary group of the New Ideas Party, known as Christian Guevara, issued a statement in which he reported the decision to temporarily separate deputies José Ilofio García and Gerardo Balmore Aguilar, “possible of an offense by reason of commitment”.

The New Ideas Party, which controls the Salvadoran Congress, confirmed that both representatives attended a meeting with Salvadoran-American businessman Roy García, “on perks from American officials in exchange for facilitating the breakup of the new parliamentary group.” To negotiate. Receive between 15 and 5 deputies to leave ideas and excerpts”.

New Ideas published 45 minutes of audio on its Twitter account in which businessman García is purportedly heard with deputies while they negotiate a possible departure from the party’s parliamentary group of between 15 and 25 deputies.

In the audio you can hear García offer the deputy to negotiate the allowances that would be given to him by the United States government in exchange for the abandonment of a large group of deputies from the new ideas.

“The United States does not endorse one political party and meets with various officials of the government of El Salvador and the citizens of Salvador, as is usual in all diplomatic relations,” the embassy said.

“Our objective in El Salvador has remained the same over the years: to create opportunities and help improve security so that Salvadores are not forced to leave their country,” he said.

García is a Salvadoran businessman based in the United States who helped organize the New Ideas party and later split and became a staunch opponent of the Bukele government. Garcia has participated in recent protests against the president.

In the 28 February elections, Nuevas Ideas won 56 of the 84 seats in the Unicameral Congress, reaching an absolute majority, which gives it total control, as well as five representatives from the Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional Party, from the Reconciliation Party. two. and one from the Christian Democratic Party for a total of 64 seats.

The Legislative Assembly also issued a press release declaring that “we will begin coordinating with other relevant national authorities to determine the responsibilities of this effort to replace the legislative work undertaken last 1 May,” when the current legislature took over.

“We are collecting and reconfirming the information. Congress President Ernesto Castro warned: “We are going to eliminate any kind of conspiracy from the beginning.”