2003 Political Parties Law

After the year 2000 there weren’t any constitutional changes affecting elections and political structure of the country. However, important legislation was passed through the Congress, such as the 2003 Law of Political Parties, for the first time formalizing the rules of existence of parties and their participation in elections. This law also introduced the electoral threshold of 5% as measure to remove small parties from Congress and promote electoral alliances and coalitional governments.

Criticism

A good account of criticism of the history and current state of Peruvian democracy is provided by Canchari Obregón (2011). While it does not include the 2011 general election, it mentions problems with efficiency and representation of the elected government.

Canchari Obregón says that the size of the Peruvian Congress in only compatible with that of the very small countries. Indeed, as of the last elections of 2011, Peru had about 20 million eligible voters, of whom about 83% participated. Given the size of Congress of 130 representatives, this makes each Congress member represent more than a hundred thousand people, which in the scale of the country is not a good representation of people’s will.

Cachari Obregón also quotes that during the electoral reforms after Fujimori’s resignation in 2000, the country was broken up into electoral districts with Congress representatives elected by each. However, this still creates representation problems, as Peru’s capital Lima acts as a single electoral district, while accounting for more than 30% of country’s population, completely outweighing some of the smaller districts.

Proposals of National Jury of Elections

In 2012 JNE called an expert meeting to discuss what reforms are needed in the country concerning elections and government forming procedures. Their main conclusion was that there need to be created a code of conducting elections. Currently elections are governed by a variety of laws, but there is no standardized written-down procedure. In opinion of this expert panel, the creation of an electoral code following other Latin American countries would promote unification of the electorate’s understanding of their rights and process of elections; it would streamline and standardize the election procedure and provoke a bigger public discussion about possible further reforms (JNE 2012).

Apart from the general recommendations, there were some specific proposals:

• Creation of a separate voting constituency for the Peruvians living abroad. Peruvian Times (2010) estimates that there are about 3 million Peruvians living outside of country, which is about 10% of the population. A lot of them also send money back to friends and relatives in Peru. According to the article, total annual remittances of this source amount to more than the tourism industry and agricultural exports combined, thus making this category of Peruvians a powerful economic force. As of now, most of votes of Peruvians living abroad are amounted to the district of Lima, further contributing to misrepresentation of voters.

• There is a proposal to eliminate preferential vote and switch attention to the mechanics of parties’ internal democracy, allow voters to directly choose candidates off an open list.

• It is also proposed to change the electoral threshold for electoral alliances. The proposal is to leave the threshold at 5% for single parties, set to 7% for alliances of 2 or 3 parties, 9% for 4 or 5 and so forth, thus further promoting creation of alliances and coalition government.

• It is proposed to split Lima into at least four electoral districts, thus reducing its weigh in elections relative to other regions.

• Finally, it is proposed to split the Presidential and Congressional elections in time to ensure better continuity, stability and efficiency of government.

The process of implementation of these changes can be tracked by the latest Bulletin of JNE dated December 2013. It anticipates the coming New Municipal Elections in Lima that took place on March 16, before the present paper was written. As well, the Bulletin gives an update and a prediction on the development of the election system of Peru. In particular, the following points are emphasized:

• The new variant of the Law of Political Parties prepared by JNE is presented. It deepens the already existing regulations, aligning with three major axes: constitutionality, internal democracy and financing of political parties. It is going to interfere and govern more the internal elections of the parties, ultimately switching to open list of candidates for Congress for the voters to choose them directly (p.14).

• Along with some other reports published with JNE, this Bulletin intends to start discussion of assigning representation quotas of indigenous people in the government. While exact mechanisms of that representation need to be worked out, future campaigns need to put a stronger emphasis on the policies concerning the indigenous population (p.15).

• Registro Nacional de Identificación y Estado Civil (RENIEC) is conducting a major campaign of supplying the population with electronic IDs. These would be used as digital signatures for voting. The new mechanism allows easier accounting of the votes and makes voting frauds more complicated. As well, this mechanism ties in with the intent to include out-of-country Peruvians into voting by allowing them to vote and sign remotely without leaving their location (p. 16).

Electronic voting

Electronic voting is an emerging concept in Peru. The test run of the electronic voting happened in a remote town of just about 1500 people during the 2011 general elections (LaRepublica.pe 2011). In the latest municipal elections of 2013 electronic voting only operated in certain districts within Lima, and no big extension is expected in 2014 (Peru this week 2013). It is important to note that US aid is used in the technical organization of the electronic voting (NDI 2014). While there is no precedent of electronic voting, it can be expected to play a bigger significance during the next presidential election cycle in 2016, increasing the speed of vote counting, percentage of communities reached, lowering fraud possibility and expediting the vote counting.

Compulsory voting

Peruvian Congressman Humberto Lay presented a project of law to switch Peru to voluntary vote (Peru21.pe diciembre 7, 2013). The article shows Lay’s reasoning: implementation of voluntary vote would necessarily strengthen the political parties by forcing them to work towards attraction of voters. It would increase the quality of the running candidates and free the election process of citizens who don’t have interest in exercising their democratic voting rights. The polls cited also suggest that a big part of the Peruvian population is in favor of voluntary vote.

However, this proposal instantly met opposition from both the nationalistic Partido Popular Cristiano (Peru21.pe, diciembre 10, 2013) and JNE represented by its President Francisco Távala (Peru21.pe, diciembre 25, 2013). As of now, while the exact process of elections is governed by Congress-passed laws, the statement of compulsory vote is given by the Constitution, so it would be much harder to abolish legally. Both the nationalistic Congressmen and JNE think that Peru is not ready to switch to voluntary voting, as sufficient civil responsibility doesn’t exist. They are afraid that if the voters are given the right not to vote, too many of them would do so, worsening the situation as opposed to the present day. The evidence to support this point can be found in the same LAPOP report of 2012, showing Peru having one of the highest voting turnouts in Latin America.

The nationalistic parties also say that there are much bigger problems of the country, such as poverty and education, so that if the poor part of population is removed from the voting, it is not likely to return to it voluntarily soon.

Given the patterns of these debates, we can rather safely assume that at least for the nearest general elections of 2016 the vote will be still obligatory.

References

1. Constitución para la República del Perú (12 de Julio de 1979), http://www.congreso.gob.pe/historico/quipu/constitu/1979.htm

2. Constitución Política del Perú 1993 con reformas hasta 2005, http://pdba.georgetown.edu/constitutions/peru/per93reforms05.html

3. Levitsky, Steven, “Fujimori and Post-Party Politics in Peru”, Journal of Democracy 10.3 (1999) 78-92, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/v010/10.3levitsky.html

4. Pre-Election Statement on Peru Elections, Feb. 11, 2000, The Carter Center, http://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc260.html

5. “Peru – Literacy rate”, Index Mundi, accessed March 20, 2014, http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/peru/literacy-rate

6. Crauss, Klifford, “Peru's Chief to Seek 3rd Term, Capping a Long Legal Battle”, New York Times, December 28, 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/122899peru-fujimori.html

7. Pedro Patrón Galindo, “14 Political marketing in a weak democracy? The Peruvian case” in Global Political Marketing, ed. Jennifer Lees-Marshment et al. (Routledge, 2010), 202-217

8. Ley n.º 28094, de Partidos Políticos (October 31, 2003), http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Electoral/Peru/partidospoliticos.pdf

9. Canchari Obregón, Guido, “Electoral rules and governance. Notes from the Peruvian experience in comparative perspective”, Mundo Electoral, Year 4 No. 11 May 2011, http://www.mundoelectoral.com/html/index.php?id=704

10. “Foreign Ministry: Peruvians living abroad tops 3 million”, January 7, 2010, http://www.peruviantimes.com/07/foreign-ministry-peruvians-living-abroad-tops-3-million/4401/

11. “ONPE resalta el inicio del voto electrónico en el Perú”, LaRepublica.pe, July 5, 2011, accessed March 20, 2014, http://www.larepublica.pe/05-06-2011/onpe-resalta-el-inicio-del-voto-electronico-en-el-peru

12. “Electronic vote used first time in Peru elections”, Peru this week, July 8, 2013, accessed March 20, 2014, http://www.peruthisweek.com/news-electronic-voting-used-for-first-time-in-peruvian-elections-100323

13. “Piloting Electronic Voting in Peru”, National Democratic Institute, accessed March 20, 2014, https://www.ndi.org/e-voting-guide/examples/piloting-electronic-voting-in-peru

14. Jurado Nacional de Elecciones, 2012. “Hacia una Reforma Integral de la Legislación Electoral. Primera reunión de trabajo”. Boletín №1, abril 2012, https://www.votoinformado.pe/publicaciones/1346724514.pdf

15. Jurado Nacional de Elecciones, 2013. “Democracia & Elecciones. Boletín del Jurado Nacional de Elecciones”. Año 1, №03, diciembre 2013, https://www.votoinformado.pe/publicaciones/1389375073.pdf

16. “Voto voluntario: Presentan proyecto de ley para implementarlo en Perú”, Peru21.pe, diciembre 7, 2013, http://peru21.pe/actualidad/voto-voluntario-presentan-proyecto-ley-implementarlo-peru-2160527

17. “Voto voluntario: Nacionalismo y PPC en contra de propuesta”, Peru21.pe, diciembre 10, 2013, http://peru21.pe/politica/voto-voluntario-nacionalismo-y-ppc-se-manifiestan-contra-2160865

18. “JNE: Es prematuro pensar en aplicar el voto voluntario en Perú”, Peru21.pe, diciembre 25, 2013, http://peru21.pe/politica/jne-prematuro-pensar-aplicar-voto-voluntario-peru-2162830