Peruvians Insist on New Election as Congress Runs Out of Time

Marcelo Rochabrun
·2 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Peruvians are keeping pressure on the government to bring forward new elections as Congress barrels toward a deadline to make a decision.

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At stake is whether President Dina Boluarte will be expected to continue her term through 2026 or whether she will transfer power to a successor earlier, amid mass anti-government unrest that has paralyzed vast swaths of Peru. If lawmakers can’t reach a deal by the end of their legislative session on Friday night, they’ll be legally hamstrung from calling new elections this year. That would put the onus on Boluarte to either resign or try to ride out the dissent.

Thousands took to the streets in capital Lima on Thursday. Protests in Peru’s rural south also continued, including clashes with security forces in the city of Juliaca, where Peru’s ombudsman’s office said protesters had tried to take over the city airport. Meanwhile, after repeated failures in recent weeks, legislators didn’t even broach election proposals on Thursday, instead discussing the need for a cable car in Lima and criticizing a former president’s handling of the pandemic.

Read a Q&A about how Peru’s political crisis started

The president of Congress, José Williams Zapata, said late Thursday there’s still no agreement to discuss early elections in the current session. Presidential elections are held every five years in Peru, and a change would come via a constitutional amendment. Those require a two-thirds majority of lawmakers in two separate legislative sessions, or a simple majority followed by a national referendum.

That makes approval of new elections in 2023 all but impossible under current rules, unless lawmakers somehow get enough momentum on Friday toward a deal that they extend the current legislative session.

Boluarte has said she will not resign in response to the protests, which have haunted her administration almost since the day she took office on Dec. 7, leading to over 50 deaths. But she has also said she does not want to finish out her term in 2026 and instead wants to hand over the presidency to a newly elected leader by the end of the year.

Anti-government protests have had significant impact on Peru’s economy, with road blockades disrupting supply chains key to the mining, tourism and agricultural sectors. Those protests have also led to a new spike in inflation, amid shortages of items like food and gas.

The International Monetary Fund said earlier on Thursday that the outlook for Peru was very uncertain and forecast slowing economic growth for 2023.

Read more on how Peru’s central bank is responding to the economic impact.

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