A Political Reform Process on the Verge of the Bicentennial of Peru’s Independence

Abstract

Our country currently faces the first political reform process in its history throughout the 21st century. Unlike its closest precedent (in the nineties), this process takes place under the rule of law, which in turn communes with the fragile Peruvian democracy that, strictly speaking, fits the prototype of imperfect Latin American democracy. With this reform, an improved institutional framework of our precarious political system is pursued. In this sense, we have experienced three reform waves from 2016 to 2020, out of which two have an institutional origin (work commissions created especially by the Parliament and the executive branch to deal with the reform) and one has a non-institutional origin (proposals for constitutional reforms presented by former President Martín Vizcarra in July 2018). However, there are still some doubts about the future application of the current political reform―if we take into account that the laws approved by the reform could not be applied either for the past 2020 Extraordinary Congressional Elections or for the next 2021 General Elections―and its process has not concluded to date. In this context, it is required to finish this political reform process and rethink some aspects concerning the need to maintain the prohibition on consecutive reelection of national and subnational authorities. Nevertheless, the possibility of allowing just one consecutive reelection is in the pipeline.