Peruvian Extraordinary Congressional Elections 2020

[Georg Ebner]

Feb 24, 2020 16:00:58 GMT iain said:

Under a pure d'Hondt system, with a threshold of 5%, the result would have been:

PARTY	SEATS	CHANGE FROM ACTUAL
Acción Popular	19	-6
Podemos Perú	16	+5
FREPAP	16	+1
Alianza para el Progreso	15	-7
Partido Morado	14	+5
Fuerza Popular	14	-1
Unión por el Perú	13	±0
Frente Amplio	12	+3
Somos Perú	11	±0

Alternatively, if the election was done on regional d'Hondt, but without the national threshold the result would have been:

PARTY	SEATS	CHANGE FROM ACTUAL
Acción Popular	23	-2
Podemos Perú	13	-2
FREPAP	9	-2
Alianza para el Progreso	20	-2
Partido Morado	7	-2
Fuerza Popular	13	-2
Unión por el Perú	12	-1
Frente Amplio	8	-1
Somos Perú	9	-2
Juntos por el Perú	3	+3
Partido Popular Cristiano	2	+2
Democracia Directa	3	+3
Perú Libre	3	+3
Partido Aprista Peruano	2	+2
Avanza País	1	+1
Perú Patria Segura	1	+1
Renacimiento Unido Nacional	1	+1

Turkey's 10%-treshold would have been nice...

[iain]

Martín Vizcarra has been impeached, meaning Manuel Merino (as President of Congress) will take over for the last couple of months before elections. This attempt was supported by almost all parties (only liberal centrists Partido Morado voted unanimously against), but looks distinctly dodgy. The frontrunner for the 2021 election, George Forsyth, has called for Merino’s immediate resignation, saying that Congress should choose a new president from the 19 congressmen who voted against the impeachment.

[cj]

Nov 15, 2020 10:30:04 GMT iain said:

Martín Vizcarra has been impeached, meaning Manuel Merino (as President of Congress) will take over for the last couple of months before elections. This attempt was supported by almost all parties (only liberal centrists Partido Morado voted unanimously against), but looks distinctly dodgy. The frontrunner for the 2021 election, George Forsyth, has called for Merino’s immediate resignation, saying that Congress should choose a new president from the 19 congressmen who voted against the impeachment.

Merino has resigned already after 6 days of protest, his whole tenure

AP link

With the public apparently supporting the  anti-corruption reforms of Vizcarra and half the legislature under investigation on a variety of alleged lawbreaking I don't think there is going to be a smooth transition here.

[Devil Wincarnate]

Sounds like the removal of Vizcarra was essentially a coup by the Navy, of all people.

[J.G.Harston]

Nov 15, 2020 23:19:36 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

Sounds like the removal of Vizcarra was essentially a coup by the Navy, of all people.

Wan't it one of the South American countries where the navy and army went to war against each other?

[finsobruce]

Nov 15, 2020 23:19:36 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

Sounds like the removal of Vizcarra was essentially a coup by the Navy, of all people.

"In the Navy, you can make a grab for power..."

[Forfarshire Conservative]

South America needs an ECOWAS to stop these coups and anti democratic actions as they keep happening.

[Devil Wincarnate]

Nov 16, 2020 9:16:59 GMT Forfarshire Conservative said:

South America needs an ECOWAS to stop these coups and anti democratic actions as they keep happening.

Problem is, it was all done via perfectly democratic means! By the standards of South American history, this was almost textbook legality.

[iain]

It is very odd. Given the endemic corruption in Peru I think it is likely that the charges from Vizcarra’s days as Governor of Moquegua may be true, but he seems to now be on a very different path, and that is fairly obviously not the reason for his ouster. He was due to stand down early next year anyway, and had shown no inclination to try and run again (which would have been against the constitution). My feeling is that this was probably done in order to repeal Vizcarra’s reform which bans congressmen from seeking re-election. Personally I think that is a stupid idea, but I see the motivation to clear out the current shower who sit in Congress.

[Forfarshire Conservative]

Nov 16, 2020 9:21:09 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

Nov 16, 2020 9:16:59 GMT Forfarshire Conservative said:

South America needs an ECOWAS to stop these coups and anti democratic actions as they keep happening.

Problem is, it was all done via perfectly democratic means! By the standards of South American history, this was almost textbook legality.

This is of course very true. Well, Peruvian politicians should be aware, this sort of outrage provokes revolutions. It's so blatant and so insulting to the Peruvian people.

[Devil Wincarnate]

Nov 16, 2020 9:47:29 GMT Forfarshire Conservative said:

Nov 16, 2020 9:21:09 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

Problem is, it was all done via perfectly democratic means! By the standards of South American history, this was almost textbook legality.

This is of course very true. Well, Peruvian politicians should be aware, this sort of outrage provokes revolutions. It's so blatant and so insulting to the Peruvian people.

It is of course still within recent memory that Peru had that more unusual type of putsch, the auto-coup.

[minionofmidas]

Nov 16, 2020 9:29:14 GMT iain said:

It is very odd. Given the endemic corruption in Peru I think it is likely that the charges from Vizcarra’s days as Governor of Moquegua may be true, but he seems to now be on a very different path, and that is fairly obviously not the reason for his ouster. He was due to stand down early next year anyway, and had shown no inclination to try and run again (which would have been against the constitution). My feeling is that this was probably done in order to repeal Vizcarra’s reform which bans congressmen from seeking re-election. Personally I think that is a stupid idea, but I see the motivation to clear out the current shower who sit in Congress.

that different path he's on appears to be very much the reason for his ouster.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing. An unelected president becomes bizarrely popular, wins some constitutional reform referenda by insane margins, dissolves a parliament controlled by his enemies... and doesn't stand a personalist list in the fresh elections. Leading to a fractured parliament consisting mostly of second-row local caciques that, once it gets organized, turns out to be even more hostile to him than the last one. And eventually impeaches him without waiting for his popularity to turn south before.

But I have a question regarding the congressional, ahem, term limits (no consecutive terms for legislators? How do you expect Parliament to function during its first months!?) that actually lead me to this thread. How does that work with the snap election for an 18 month remainder of the term (itself an interesting concept)? Could nobody who served in 16-20 stand in 2020? Can nobody who serves in 20-1 stand next year? Small wonder these MPs turned out a special bunch if both of these are correct, but I'm looking for confirmation that that is indeed the case.

[iain]

I believe the current legislators cannot run for re-election, no. That is why I suggested changing this law might be the reason for ousting Vizcarra - after all, he was also term-limited, and out by April. There doesn’t really seem to be a lot of point to this otherwise (and given the clusterfuck it’s now descended into, they might not get that anyway).

One term limits does seem fairly insane for congressmen - I expect you’d end up almost having 2 sets of alternating parliamentarians (kind of like Piñera and Bachelet have done with the Presidency in Chile).

[minionofmidas]

Nov 16, 2020 16:35:19 GMT iain said:

I believe the current legislators cannot run for re-election, no. That is why I suggested changing this law might be the reason for ousting Vizcarra - after all, he was also term-limited, and out by April. There doesn’t really seem to be a lot of point to this otherwise (and given the clusterfuck it’s now descended into, they might not get that anyway).

One term limits does seem fairly insane for congressmen - I expect you’d end up almost having 2 sets of alternating parliamentarians (kind of like Piñera and Bachelet have done with the Presidency in Chile).

and what's with the 16-20 group? Can they stand in 21? If it's modelled on the presidential rules then the answer is no.

[iain]

Nov 16, 2020 18:33:06 GMT minionofmidas said:

Nov 16, 2020 16:35:19 GMT iain said:

I believe the current legislators cannot run for re-election, no. That is why I suggested changing this law might be the reason for ousting Vizcarra - after all, he was also term-limited, and out by April. There doesn’t really seem to be a lot of point to this otherwise (and given the clusterfuck it’s now descended into, they might not get that anyway).

One term limits does seem fairly insane for congressmen - I expect you’d end up almost having 2 sets of alternating parliamentarians (kind of like Piñera and Bachelet have done with the Presidency in Chile).

and what's with the 16-20 group? Can they stand in 21? If it's modelled on the presidential rules then the answer is no.

I think no as well - they were able to stand in the Extraordinary Elections. It’s not all totally clear though!

[iain]

Francisco Sagasti, a former World Bank official, is the new President. He is a member of Partido Morado, and voted against the removal of Vizcarra.

Martha Vásquez (Frente Amplio, also voted against the Presidential Vacancy) will become President of Congress.

[Khunanup]

It's a textbook copy of the stupidity of the executive president model, where the executive can essentially be in all out war against the legislature (which as has been noted above, included no inherent allies of the president) who can then, entirely legally ditch the president to rid themselves of the 'problem' via impeachment (for something that is very probably entirely true, no matter how hypocritical it is of the members of Congress to do him for it).

The President didn't even have electoral legitimacy to fall back on because he wasn't elected president, merely coming into the position via PPK's resignation.
In a parliamentary system we'd just shrug and move on because to start with he'd have to build a coalition to back his plans etc and if Congress didn't like it they'd just vote no confidence in the government and that would be that.

Some overall weirdness about the whole thing. He was impeached twice in less than two months with the first impeachment getting nowhere near the votes required, it was only when seemingly credible evidence of long standing corrupt activities came to light before the second one that Congress went for him big time (presumably because he'd made anti-corruption such a big thing but for congressional members they just saw him as a massive hypocrite, a bad as any of them).
The other is that you had a liberal centrist impeached and replaced by a liberal centrist who's now quit and been replaced by a liberal centrist. Whatever is going on it's certainly not a battle of extremes or really ideology at all (well, apart from how corrupt you can be of course...).

[iain]

Nov 17, 2020 9:37:01 GMT Khunanup said:

He was impeached twice in less than two months with the first impeachment getting nowhere near the votes required, it was only when seemingly credible evidence of long standing corrupt activities came to light before the second one that Congress went for him big time (presumably because he'd made anti-corruption such a big thing but for congressional members they just saw him as a massive hypocrite, a bad as any of them).

While I agree with most of your post - the Presidency model has also contributed to the dreadfully weak party systems that plague much of Latin America today - the reason for the second impeachment succeeding was almost certainly as much to do with a slew of backroom deals as it was additional evidence.

[Georg Ebner]

Nov 17, 2020 10:50:34 GMT iain said:

Nov 17, 2020 9:37:01 GMT Khunanup said:

He was impeached twice in less than two months with the first impeachment getting nowhere near the votes required, it was only when seemingly credible evidence of long standing corrupt activities came to light before the second one that Congress went for him big time (presumably because he'd made anti-corruption such a big thing but for congressional members they just saw him as a massive hypocrite, a bad as any of them).

While I agree with most of your post - the Presidency model has also contributed to the dreadfully weak party systems that plague much of Latin America today - the reason for the second impeachment succeeding was almost certainly as much to do with a slew of backroom deals as it was additional evidence.

But as France demonstrated (with its impressive series of Mirabeau, Napoleon, Napoleon III, MacMahon, Boulanger, Petain, DeGaulle): If a country has an inclination for caudillos, they either get integrated into the system - or they will be a permanent threat to the partitocracy.