Lima, 17 Feb. The Peruvian Congress approved this Friday the possibility that an early election could be analyzed again by the Constitution Commission to, possibly, be evaluated in the current legislature by the plenary session of the Legislature.
The decision was taken with 69 votes for, 35 against and 7 abstentions.
The President of Congress, José Williams, clarified that this measure “is only to authorize that the question be seen in the annual period of the sessions” and that “there is no bill that can be presented at this time before the plenary session.
“As a result, the constitutional reform initiatives in the area of elections will be the subject of a study and an opinion within the Constitution and Standing Orders Commission and then they will be published for seven days,” he said. -He specifies.
In this way, the President of the Constitution Commission, the Fujimorista Hernando Guerra García, must urgently summon the members of his working group to analyze a new project to advance the elections, after the rejection of four initiatives presented by the executive.
The television channel N pointed out that, for this decision to be implemented, this legislature must be extended until February 28.
Before the vote, Williams said the possibility of resubmitting an early election decision had been approved by the Council of Spokespersons.
Given this, lawmaker Jorge Montoya of the ultra-conservative People’s Renovation party raised a ‘question of order’ after saying his bench disagreed with the ‘reconsideration reconsideration’ .
“We consider that this initiative is arbitrary and unconstitutional”, he underlined before underlining that in this same legislature other proposals for the anticipation of the elections were rejected “since they did not reach the legal number by vote (in plenary session) and were rejected by the Constitution Committee”.
Williams replied that this request was not appropriate because the last decision had been taken by the Council of Spokespersons and that the plenary session would only decide whether it “agreed or disagreed” with the possibility that the Commission of the Constitution be empowered to prepare a new draft.
The President of Congress already announced last Saturday that the Legislative Assembly could still approve a bill providing for early elections, despite the fact that the plenary session rejected initiatives that raised this possibility up to four times in the past. last weeks.
Advancement of elections is one of the main demands of anti-government protests that began in various parts of the country two months ago and in which 70 people have died.
But Congress has not agreed to approve any of the four legislative initiatives that included this advancement of general elections for 2023 or 2024, two of them proposed by the executive branch and two others by parliamentary groups, including Fujimori.
“If the plenary session of Congress accepts it, the drafts that arrive in the Constitution Committee will be considered in due course,” said Williams, stressing that this working group must find sufficient arguments to propose to the plenary session the one of the previous projects or a new one.
The current Congressional term ended last Friday, but that same day Williams announced that it would be extended until February 17 and would now have to be extended again so that the proposed Constitutional Bill could be debated.