A political party in El Salvador has filed a lawsuit against President Nayib Bukele’s new Bitcoin law. A group of citizens joining forces with the opposition political party called Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), filed a lawsuit claiming President Bukele’s Bitcoin adoption program is unconstitutional.
Backstory
El Salvador’s legislative arm passed a law by a supermajority that made bitcoin a legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar. The event presented the first country to perform such a move since bitcoin’s inception.
READ: IMF sees risks after El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
Opposition to the Bitcoin policy
The move by the country has brought in mixed opinions. FMNL is one of two major parties in the country’s multi-party political system and legislator Jaime Guevara, who belongs to the party, is the deputy of the department of Morazán in the country’s northeast.
According to a report on Tuesday by one of Spain’s largest newspaper, El Mundo, Guevara has joined citizens to oppose the law. Guevara and a group of citizens have now filed a lawsuit against the country’s new bitcoin law, calling it “unconstitutional”.
Oscar Artero, a citizen plaintiff on the lawsuit against the new law said the lawsuit was brought because the policy lacked a legal basis and failed to consider the harmful effects on the country.
He stated, “The bitcoin law is to loot people’s pockets, it is tax-exempt. They want to force us to trade.” He added that he hopes the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, the country’s top judicial branch, would side with his argument.
READ: World Bank refuses to assist El Salvador with Bitcoin integration
What they are saying
Salvadorian lawyer, Enrique Anaya, commented that the Presidential House was not clear on how to implement the Bitcoin Law, which was approved on June 9, and suspects that the lawmakers may have even initiated the lawsuit internally.
A survey of 1,600 individuals conducted by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of El Salvador between June 11 and 15 indicated that more than eight out of ten Salvadorans would not agree to receive payments and salaries in Bitcoin. On June 16, El Salvador’s Minister of Labor and Social Welfare, Rolando Castro, said the country is not yet ready to adopt Bitcoin for salary payments.
Earlier reported by Nairametrics, a professor of Applied Economics at John Hopkins University, Steve Hanke warned that El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender has the potential to “completely collapse the economy.” He stated, “It has the potential to completely collapse the economy because all the dollars in El Salvador could be vacuumed up and there’d be no money in the country. They don’t have a domestic currency.”
Bitcoin is trading $32,000, down 3.45% for the day, as at the time of writing this report.
