Lima, (EFE).- The Peruvian Congress approved a request to reconsider the vote that last Friday rejected a project for the general elections in the country to be brought forward to October of this year.
The decision, which was taken with 66 votes in favor, 44 against and 6 abstentions from the plenary session, had the decisive vote of the president of Congress, the right-wing José Williams, to reach the minimum necessary to be accepted.
In this way, Congress will debate again to seek a consensus that allows reaching the 87 votes necessary to accept the early elections that, if approved, must be voted on again in the next legislature, as it is a constitutional reform.
At the beginning of the debate, the author of the request for reconsideration, the Fujimorista Arturo Alegría, pointed out to the legislators that they have to “give an answer to the citizenry” and take “into account the crisis” that their country is facing, in reference to the demonstrations anti-government groups that since last December have left 65 dead.
In response, the spokesman for the Marxist Peru Libre party, Flavio Cruz, said that “the population is demanding that President Dina Boluarte resign” and that “this would help the solution that the entire country is seeking.”
After rejecting the possibility of approving the electoral advance for October, he asked that the plenary session take into account a minority opinion presented by his party, which calls for the elections to be brought forward in four months, with the inclusion of a consultation on the constituent assembly.
José Jerí, spokesman for the center-right party Somos Perú, opined that Congress “must approve this reconsideration because the extremes are playing their game” and “a balance point must be found” to reach “a minimum agreement” between benches.
For her part, Ruth Luque, from the leftist party of Juntos por el Perú, also said that Boluarte must resign or Congress debates his dismissal, while Adriana Tudela, from the right-wing Avanza País party, pointed out that her party “has never clung to to no position”, but insists on “that the elections be carried out within a reasonable time, in peace and with minimal reforms”.
In turn, Jorge Montoya, from the ultra-conservative Renovación Popular party, rejected any possibility of advancing the elections to before 2026, when the current period should end, and Fujimori’s Patricia Juárez maintained that “this is a difficult moment” and the objective must be be “achieve the long-awaited pacification of the country” and accept the early elections.
After the reconsideration was accepted, the president of the Constitution Commission, the Fujimorista Hernando Guerra García, asked for an intermediate room to meet with the representatives of the different benches and “propose a way out of the country.”
The plenary session of Congress rejected on Friday to advance the general elections in the country to next October, after debating for more than 8 hours a project proposed by Guerra García.
In this way, another electoral advance project was also set aside, which was approved, in the first instance, on December 20, so that the elections could be held in April 2024.
