SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador >> President Nayib Bukele announced tonight on El Salvador’s Independence Day that he will seek re-election to a second five-year term.

Bukele’s anticipated announcement came one year after the new justices of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court appointed by his allies in the Legislative Assembly ordered the Supreme Electoral Court to allow consecutive re-election despite the country’s constitutional ban.

Constitutional lawyers have said re-election violates at least four articles of the constitution, including one that limits the presidential term to five years and states that the person who serves as president will not continue in their functions for one day more.

The president enjoys extremely high popularity among Salvadorans, though he has faced growing criticism from human rights groups and foreign governments about his concentration of power.

Bukele, whose current term ends in 2024, made the announcement during a televised speech with his wife at his side. The president of the Supreme Court and the attorney general also were present for the speech.

After touting his party’s winning control of congress, followed by lawmakers’ moves to replace Supreme Court justices and the attorney general, Bukele said those decisions had finally put El Salvador on the right path.

They also allowed the imposition in late March of a state of exception that suspended some constitutional rights and resulted in tens of thousands of arrests in response to a surge in gang killings.

“These decisions were also strongly criticized by a part of the international community,” Bukele said. “But they are precisely those decisions that have finally allowed us security; they are those decision that finally allowed us peace.”

He promised not to leave that path, adding that was why he had decided to seek re-election.

Bukele said he knew more than one foreign country would criticize his decision, but “we are not going to abandon it regardless of how many protests come from abroad.”