Compass Elections: Peru's Congressional Election 101
The Legislative Palace in Lima, Peru houses Peru’s Congress. (Wikimedia Commons)
Peru will hold a snap election for its Congress on January 26 after the previous legislature was dissolved by President Martín Vizcarra on September 30 last year. Here’s what you need to know.
Peru-sing Peru’s Political Past
Peru’s last hundred years were dominated by military governments interspersed with attempts at democratic elections. Despite the return to civilian rule in 1980, the country was plagued with economic problems, exacerbated by the rise of the Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path. The liberal economic policies of President Fernando Belaúnde and his party Popular Action (AP) soon became unpopular, and Alan García, from the center-left American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), took over the presidency in the 1985 election in what was Peru’s first peaceful transition of power from one party to another in the 20th century.
Hyperinflation and an increasingly bloody guerrilla war doomed García’s promising presidency: his approval rating plunged from 95 percent at the start of his term to 6 percent by the end. In the 1990 election, Alberto Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, won by decrying the privatization proposals of his opponent, novelist Mario Vargas Llosa (who would later win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010).
Once in office, however, Fujimori implemented the harsh austerity measures he so recently denounced. In 1992, in what became known as a “self-coup,” Fujimori with the help of the military suspended the Constitution, dissolving the opposition-dominated judiciary and Congress. Fujimori ruled increasingly with an iron fist in his fight against Shining Path, and secured reelection in 1995 with a new Congress dominated by his faction.
Former President Alberto Fujimori at his trial in 2009. (Wikimedia Commons)
His decision to run for a third term, though, proved to be his downfall. Fujimori won the 2000 election amid allegations of vote-rigging, but a release of a video later that year showing Fujimori’s closest adviser (and head of the secret police) Vladimiro Montesinos bribing a congressman caused the collapse of the government. Fujimori fled to Japan as Congress formally ousted him from office, leading to new elections being held in 2001.
When Fujimori attempted to organize a campaign for president in the 2006 election from exile in Chile, he was arrested and extradited to Peru under warrants for corruption and human rights abuse. Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment in 2009 for his role in the creation of a death squad.
The Peruvian Government, Sponsored by Odebrecht
Alejandro Toledo won the 2001 election as the country’s first indigenous Quechua president. Alan García returned to office in the 2006 election, defeating the left-wing former army officer Ollanta Humula. Since amendments to the Peruvian Constitution following Fujimori’s rule prohibits consecutive terms for presidents, the runoff of the 2011 election came down to Ollanta Humula versus Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the former president. Humula won the contest in a close race –– 51.5 percent against 48.5 percent. The runoff of the 2016 election, between Keiko Fujimori and economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, was even closer, with Kuczynski winning by less than a percentage point –– 50.1 percent against 49.9 percent.
Almost immediately, however, a massive corruption scandal swamped the new Kuczynski administration. The Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht admitted in late 2016 that it paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to secure contracts throughout Latin America. In Peru, where the Peruvian government had been contracting Odebrecht for decades, the ensuing investigation implicated nearly all of its living former presidents in the corruption scandal.
Odebrecht’s Office in Lima. (Wikimedia Commons)
Humula was arrested in 2017, released the next year, and currently faces a 20-year prison charge from the country’s prosecutors. Toledo was arrested in the U.S. in 2019 and currently awaits an extradition request. García shot himself in the head when authorities tried to arrest him in 2019. Kuczynski, the then-President and Toledo’s former finance minister, was also implicated in the scandal.
In December 2017, Kuczynski survived an impeachment vote initiated by Keiko Fujimori’s party, Popular Force (FP). He then issued a pardon on Christmas Eve to Alberto Fujimori, allegedly for humanitarian reasons but widely seen as an attempt to curry favor with the Fujimorista opposition. Kuczynski finally resigned after a separate vote-buying scandal months later, and Alberto Fujimori was returned to prison.
Peruvian Standoff
Martín Vizcarra, the current president of Peru. (Wikimedia Commons)
Martín Vizcarra, the ambassador to Canada and Kuczynski’s vice-president, succeeded Kuczynski as president in March 2018. Vizcarra prioritized anti-corruption efforts, calling them necessary to counter the growing popular mistrust in government. Congress, dominated by the Popular Force, repeatedly tried to block Vizcarra’s proposed reforms. In response, Vizcarra dissolved Congress, ironically causing the Fujimorista opposition to decry such a move as ignoring proper procedure. Vizcarra’s gambit was met with widespread popular support: opinion polls showed that more than 80 percent of Peruvians supported shutting down Congress.
Peru’s Constitutional Court, the country’s highest court, ruled 4-3 on January 14 that Vizcarra acted constitutionally in dissolving Congress, and all justices agreed that the snap Congressional election must proceed as scheduled on January 26.
Congressional Structure
Peru’s 130-member unicameral legislature, the Congress of the Republic, usually holds elections every five years. However, Peru’s 1993 constitution provides a mechanism for the president to dissolve Congress if it twice denies a vote of confidence to the president’s cabinet, with a new election to be held within four months of the dissolution. With Congress having already denied a vote of confidence once under Kuczynski, Vizcarra interpreted the refusal of lawmakers to take up his call for a vote of confidence as a second rejection, allowing him to dissolve the legislature. The members of Congress elected in this snap election will serve only slightly more than a year, with the regular general elections scheduled to be held in April 2021.
District Magnitude Map of Peru. (Map by Kyle Wang)
Peru is divided into 26 congressional districts, corresponding to its administrative divisions. Aside from the metropolitan Lima Province, which elects 36 members, the remaining 25 districts seat between one to seven representatives, in proportion to their respective populations. Parties have to win 5 percent of the nationwide vote in order to be eligible for seats, and the district seats are allocated according to the D’Hondt method, which tends to favor large parties. Voting is compulsory for citizens between 18 and 70 years old.
Peru has an open-list proportional representation system: in addition to voting for a party, Peruvian voters can also cast up to two preferential votes for candidates, with the final order of the candidates on the list determined by the votes received. (Peru also requires at least 30 percent of the candidates on party lists to be female, as well as at least 30 percent to be male – so each party tends to run at least three candidates even in districts with fewer than three elected representatives.)
The Parties
The Peruvian public is apathetic: despite widespread support for dissolving Congress last year, none of the 21 parties is consistently polling in double digits, and around 40 percent of voters intend to spoil their ballots, according to a January 19 poll by Ipsos. Vizcarra is also not a member of any of the registered political parties, but he is considered a centrist and is likely to build ad hoc coalitions with the centrist parties in Congress. Here are some of the top-polling parties:
Popular Action (AP): The liberal-centrist party founded by former president Fernando Belaúnde, who oversaw the country’s return to democracy in 1980. The current mayor of Lima is from the party, which has probably increased its prominence. Benefiting from not being connected to the corruption scandal, it will likely expand its seats from the five it has currently.
Popular Force (FP): The right-wing Fujimorista party, characterized by its conservative social and neoliberal economic policies. The party leader, Keiko Fujimori, was arrested for money laundering in 2018, but was released in November 2019. FP won 73 seats in the 2016 election, but factional infighting between Keiko and her younger brother Kenji led to several legislators leaving the party. It is expected to lose its majority in Congress due to the scandal and its obstruction of Vizcarra’s proposed reforms.
Purple Party (PM): A new centrist party founded by Georgetown alum Julio Guzmán (MPP ‘02), who was disqualified in the 2016 presidential election on a technicality. It seems to be the party most closely aligned with Vizcarra, according to Bloomberg. Therefore, it is likely to be the party which Vizcarra relies on the most for the rest of his term.
Alliance for Progress (APP): A center-right party led by César Acuña, the former mayor of Trujillo, Peru’s third-largest city. Vizcarra’s prime minister from 2018 to March 2019, César Villanueva (who was arrested in October 2019 for alleged connection with the Odebrecht case), is from this party.
American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA): Peru’s oldest surviving political party, formed in 1924 as an anti-imperialist left-wing party. It became increasingly conservative and currently maintains an informal alliance with the Fujimoristas. The suicide of APRA’s long-standing leader Alan García in connection with the corruption scandal will likely cause ARPA to lose support as well. That might be devastating, because the party holds only five seats in Congress.
“Somos Perú” (“We are Peru” ): A Christian democratic party that was founded as an anti-Fujimori alliance in the 1990s by the then-mayor of Lima. George Forsyth, the mayor of Lima’s La Victoria district and a former soccer player, is a member of the party. He currently polls second place for the 2021 presidential election, trailing former Prime Minister Salvador Del Solar (who held the position from March to September 2019).
Frente Amplio (FA, “Broad Front”): An electoral coalition of leftist parties in Peru. Verónika Mendoza, who finished third in the 2016 presidential election, ran as the coalition’s candidate and intends to run again for the 2021 election. However, her party New Peru broke away from the coalition in 2017, suggesting that the Peruvian Left is fractured at the moment.
What's Next?
With anti-corruption being this election’s chief issue, it remains to be seen if Peruvians will take this opportunity to replace the Congress with reformers. With widespread public apathy, however, a fractured legislature with no working majority seems highly likely. Centrist parties seem to lead in polls, but the redistribution of votes by Peru’s electoral system might add a degree of uncertainty to the final composition of the Congress. In any case, this election could decide the legacy of President Vizcarra.