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Peru The Legislature
The legislature had two houses: a Senate composed of 60
members and a Chamber of Deputies composed of 180 members.
Members of Congress were elected to five-year terms of
office,
which ran concurrently with those of the president and
vice
presidents. Members of both chambers had to be native
Peruvians;
senators had to be at least thirty-five years of age;
deputies,
twenty-five. There was no prohibition on the reelection of
congressional representatives.
Congress had the power to initiate and pass
legislation;
interpret, amend, and repeal existing legislation; draft
sanctions for violation of legislation; approve treaties;
approve
the budget and general accounts; authorize borrowing;
exercise
the right of amnesty; and delegate the legislative
function to
the president. A vote of two-thirds of each house was
required to
pass or amend legislation. The constitution mandated a
balanced
budget. If Congress did not come up with a balanced budget
by
December 15 of each year, the president promulgated a
budget by
executive decree. Congress convened twice annually, from
July 27
to December 15 and again from April 1 to May 31.
Members of Congress were elected according to their
position
on party lists, rather than on the basis of local or
regional
representation, and thus did not have a strong regional or
executive base of support. This is not to say that they
had no
regional representation. Whereas members of the Senate
were
elected by regions, members of the Chamber of Deputies
were
distributed in accordance with the d'Hondt system of
proportional
representation, which is based primarily on electoral
density,
with at least one deputy from each district.
Voters cast votes for a particular party, which
presented a
list of candidates in numerical order of preference.
Voters were
allowed to indicate a first-choice candidate, and these
votes
were tallied as "preferential votes," which might
determine a
candidate's position on the list in future elections, or
which
region he or she represents. According to the percentage
of votes
per region or department, a certain number of seats were
allotted
in the Congress for that party. A candidate's position on
the
party list determined whether or not he or she obtained a
congressional seat. There was, however, no direct regional
representation in the central government, a situation that
would
not be changed by the introduction of regional
governments, as
their role was to be strictly limited to the regions.
Congress had the power to censure the Council of
Ministers
and to demand information through interpellation. Yet,
this gave
it more of a reactive power than anything else. If the
Chamber of
Deputies used its vote of no confidence three times, the
president could dissolve the body. Although Congress could
make
life difficult for the executive branch through censure,
interpellation, or the creation of special investigative
commissions, these processes occurred largely
after-the-fact.
Particularly with the increase in insurgent violence
and the
large proportion of the country under emergency rule, the
power
of the Congress to pass legislation with an impact on
significant
sectors of the population was increasingly limited. At
times,
though, after-the-fact processes had resulted in the
halting or
repeal of damaging legislation. For example, President
García's
decree nationalizing banks in July 1987 was repealed in
late
1990, and President Fujimori's Decree Law 171, which
legislated
that all crimes committed by the military in the emergency
zones
be tried in military courts, was repealed in early 1991.
In
addition, the Congress's special investigative commissions
on
issues such as human rights and judicial corruption,
although
perhaps unable to have immediate impact on policy, have
been
quite successful at bringing such matters to public
attention.
The discretionary power accorded the president was
designed
to avoid the stalemate that occurred prior to 1968, yet it
resulted in a system that was highly concentrated in the
power of
the executive, with little or no public accountability and
little
significant input on the part of the legislature. Although
the
Congress could hold ministers accountable for their
actions,
there was little it could do, short of impeachment, to
affect the
operations of the president. The president, meanwhile,
unconstrained by midterm elections or immediate
reelection, had
little incentive to build a lasting base of support in the
legislature.
Data as of September 1992
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