On September 30, 2019, Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra dissolved the Congress after the rejection of two confidence questions tabled by the government. The head of state accused the parliament, dominated by the fujimorist (populist right) opposition, of obstructing any attempt at reform and obstructing the proper conduct of anti-corruption investigations.
Since then, Peru has operated with an Interim Congress composed of only 27 parliamentarians from 130 seats. The voters are called, Sunday January 26, to renew the single parliamentary room, in order to complete the mandate which runs until 2021. But, in the middle of the great school holidays of the southern summer, the Peruvians seem to sulk these elections, even when they had acclaimed the dissolution of Congress, perceived as a lair of corruption.
Plethora of candidates
The third and last electoral debate, broadcast on Sunday on several television channels, was dull and without big ideas. A few days before the vote, almost half of voters say they are undecided, according to an Ipsos-Peru survey, and 19% say they will vote blank or void.
This lack of interest is partly due to the atypical configuration of a poll convened in an emergency, with a plethora of candidates – often unknown – and movements, some of which created for the occasion (21 formations in the running and more than 2,300 candidates), with no clearly identifiable partisan structure.
Confronted with a strong desire for change by the elites, the parties played the game of new heads. Often technocratic profiles, without political depth. Juan de la Puente, columnist forEl Comercio, the big center-right daily, worries about the glaring lack of proposals. “We are in a country that discusses its future without ideas. It’s something completely new. Both (Alone) proposals are to end parliamentary immunity and reduce the salaries of parliamentarians. Is that why we dissolved the Congress? " he laments.
In this context, many candidates rely on controversy to exist in a saturated media space. Populist declarations, untenable promises and racist remarks are legion. The National Solidarity Party (PSN), a far-right party led by a member of Opus Dei who dreams of being a "Peruvian Bolsonaro", Rafael Lopez Aliaga (a former fujimorist), has made himself its master. One of the PSN candidates recently authorized himself to give a soap to a Métis candidate during a television debate, a gesture which he later justified as the symbol of a call to a political game. " clean ". An exit that earned him an outcry on social networks and the opening of an investigation into discrimination.
