Lawmakers in Keiko Fujimori’s Fuerza Popular party are waging an open battle with the president of the Congress, Daniel Salaverry, following his decision yesterday to authorize renegade members of Congress to form new caucuses.
Salaverry’s decision — which has been given a thumbs-up by the Constitutional Court— is earth-shattering to Fuerza Popular, which had 71 seats in the 130 seat Congress when it was elected in 2016 and consistently blocked the governing party, forcing several cabinet shifts and the resignation of President Pedro Pablo Kucaynski in March this year .
The new regulation has led immediately to two new caucuses — Liberal, formed by four lawmakers who resigned from the PPK party earlier in the year plus Francesco Petrozzi from Fuerza Popular; and Cambio 21, formed by nine lawmakers who either resigned or were ousted by Fuerza Popular.
The party still has the largest number of seats of any one party but by yesterday, they had 61 seats and politicians expect a stampede of further resignations of lawmakers wanting to distance themselves from Keiko Fujimori, serving a 36-month preventive custody sentence in an investigation into money laundering and obstruction of justice, and from the 80+% disapproval rating of the Congress. These lawmakers will not be re-elected to Congress but could be candidates for regional and local elections in 2022.
Earlier this year, the congressional majority approved a bill that would create a Mixed Caucus to group all lawmakers who either resign or are ousted from their own party, setting limits to what these lawmakers could do, and forbidding the creation of new, independent caucuses. It was a clear attempt to stem the tide of members of Congress wanting to leave Fuerza Popular, thus creating a power shift and undermining the majority party’s tight control of the Congress.
The Constitutional Court, however, ruled that the proposal needed to be revised to allow new caucuses to be formed and for lawmakers to have full representation powers.
Congressman Carlos Tubino, spokesman for Fuerza Popular, has accused Salaverry of acting as if he owned the Congress, while Rosa Bartra of the same party and head of the Constitution Committee (and the Lava Jato investigation committee) is asking her colleagues to reject Salaverry’s decision and ignore the Court’s ruling.
“How can we talk about improving justice in our country, if here in the Congress we are not willing to accept and abide by the rulings of the Constitutional Court,” Salaverry asked.
“What I have done is my duty. As president of the Congress, I am obliged to comply with and abide by the mandates of jurisdictional institutions, in this specific case, that of the Constitutional Court. No one can be above the law,” he said.
“The Constitutional Court sentences are not discussed, they are complied with and that’s what’s happened here,” said the president of the Constitutional Court, Ernesto Blume, on the state TV Peru.
Salaverry, a member of Fuerza Popular, was elected in July to preside the Congress for 2018-2019, but as soon as he was elected he distanced himself in order to “be impartial” and has since clashed several times with party members.
Keiko shouldn’t have a party because she used her power to influence voters in her group. She acted like she was president of Peru. Plus I wouldn’t trust any one of them.