PERU´S PRESIDENT SURVIVES BECAUSE SHE´S NOT IN CHARGE / THE ECONOMIST

An overmighty Congress

Peru’s president survives because she’s not in charge

The lawmakers are dismantling institutions

In recent times Peru has become accustomed to impeachment attempts, threats to dissolve Congress and accusations of coup-mongering in relentless battles between the president and the legislature. 

Yet the past year has seen an eerie peace between Dina Boluarte, the president since December 2022, and Congress. 

That is because both are deeply unpopular. 

Pollsters give Ms Boluarte an approval rating of just 5%, the lowest in the Americas.

She has never been loved. 

She came to office because she was the vice-president of Pedro Castillo, a leftist impeached and arrested because he declared a coup against Congress and the courts. 

Her first weeks were marked by sometimes violent protests in which security forces killed around 50 demonstrators. 

The economy has languished on her watch, while crime and poverty have risen. 

Formerly a low-paid bureaucrat, she has struggled to explain her penchant for Rolex watches.

Initial demands for early elections have faded, as have calls for the president’s impeachment over the Rolexes (she says they were “loans”). 

Why does she survive? 

The short answer is that she is not running the country; those in charge are the right-wing and centrist lawmakers who run Congress, which itself has an approval rate of just 4%. 

Since Ms Boluarte lacks a vice-president, the constitution requires that if she falls, Congress must call an election. 

But its members have no desire to cut short their term and the lavish salaries and perks they command.

While Ms Boluarte often has nothing scheduled in her official diary, lawmakers are busy. 

They have sought to oust the members of the board that oversees the judiciary and have passed counter-reforms that dismantle previous efforts to strengthen institutions and the rule of law. 

Congress has repealed a law to curb illegal mining, neutered a body tasked with regulating for-profit universities that cater to poorer students, and allowed thousands of schoolteachers who have failed basic tests to return to classrooms.

Some of the new laws have merit. 

Congress has repealed a ban, approved by referendum in 2018, against its members standing for consecutive terms. 

That was popular but misguided: politicians were denied a career and voters could not hold them to account. 

The result: more than half of the current 130 are suspects in criminal probes, according to La República, a newspaper. 

The mining law was ineffective: there are now around 700,000 illegal miners in Peru. 

But many of the changes are self-serving. 

One involves a new law cutting fines for parties that fail to report campaign expenses, a boon to politicians who use them to enrich themselves.

The constitutional court, too, has added to the legislature’s power after Congress appointed new justices to it in 2022. 

One of its decisions has allowed Congress to initiate new spending measures, which the constitution itself bans. 

That is bad for Peru’s hard-earned fiscal credibility. 

Lawmakers have approved almost 50bn soles ($13bn) in off-budget spending so far, according to the fiscal council, an official advisory body. 

In the past the economy ministry tended to curtail lawmakers’ populist whims. 

But it kept quiet as Congress awarded bonuses for pensioners and judges, drew up regressive tax breaks and ignored its own limit for the fiscal deficit. 

“There’s no longer an adult in the room,” says Alonso Segura, a former finance minister who heads the council.

Earlier this month Congress passed legislation to exempt from prosecution crimes against humanity committed before 2002. 

That is contrary to international human-rights law. 

The best-known beneficiary is Alberto Fujimori, who ruled Peru as an autocrat from 1990 to 2000. 

The measure would quash his conviction for orchestrating the killing of 25 civilians while president. 

But prosecutors say it would also force them to close 600 cases of murder, torture and rape stemming from the battle between the security forces and the Shining Path, a Maoist terrorist group, in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Ms Boluarte has already defied the Inter-American Court of Human Rights by releasing Mr Fujimori from prison after a local court upheld a pardon.

Many Peruvians hope that the next election, due in 2026, will bring better leadership. 

The omens are not good. 

More than 30 parties plan to take part. 

Improbably, Mr Fujimori, who is 85, says he plans to run again. 

And the next president will face an empowered Congress.